Ocwen Financial’s dry spell of acquiring nonperforming FHA loans out of Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities pools ended in early December with the nonbank servicing giant buying $253.1 million of delinquent product. Speculation, however, is mounting that Ocwen may not be long for the Ginnie Mae business, at least as a servicer. Ocwen’s disclosure of the “early” FHA buyouts came 11 days after it sold to an undisclosed buyer. In the first quarter, the company engaged in $646 million of early buyouts (EBO) and followed up with a $490 million EBO deal in the second quarter. However, EBO volume fell to zero in the third quarter. The December acquisition came in one fell swoop raising cautious, short-term expectations at Ocwen. “We expect to execute more such purchases in the next few months, as long as market conditions are favorable,” said Chief Investment Officer John Britti. As fast as it had ...

The Mortgage Bankers Association this week declined to participate in a panel discussion on FHA hosted by the American Enterprise Institute because the trade group did not believe the discussion would be balanced and though it would favor only a certain point of view. The topic was “FHA from 1934 to 1938: Lessons for Wealth Building,” with Ed Pinto, a resident fellow at AEI, and Dave Stevens, MBA president, as presenters. Stevens, however, decided to pull out of the event when he saw the format. In a letter to the AEI organizers, Stevens said he agreed to be a presenter thinking the debate “would be a balanced approach.” “When I first agreed to do this, I did not expect that the format would be 45 minutes of [Ed Pinto] and then no more than 12 minutes for me to respond,” he wrote. “That’s an extremely lopsided approach that did not appear to be ...

Proposed Data Collection for Evaluating Impact of Pre-Purchase Homeownership Counseling. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has asked the Office of Management and Budget to clear a proposal to collect information for a national study that would gauge the effectiveness of pre-purchase homeownership counseling. Rather than individual telephone interviews, the study plans to conduct focus groups and to collect data regarding the characteristics and performance of participants’ mortgage loans, even after the end of the study. The information collection will involve an estimated 6,000 borrower-participants, 1,800 co-borrowers, 64 counseling organizations and three FHA lenders. The study will be conducted in three cities at a cost of approximately $521,830. The proposal will be published in the ...

On the supply side, there were $5.63 trillion of single-family MBS guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae outstanding at the end of September.

President Obama this week signed a comprehensive package of spending bills, providing funding to federal agencies through fiscal 2015 but missing two initiatives that would have toughened FHA enforcement and benefited new homeowners through enhanced housing counseling. The FY 2015 Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act is comprised of 11 funding bills for all federal agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The bill provides...

When settlements are first reported rarely does the money change hands right away.

Ocwen also did not disclose what it paid to acquire the nonperforming loans or who the buyer was.

The City of San Francisco has delayed a proposed partnership with Richmond, CA, to use eminent-domain authority to forcibly acquire distressed mortgages out of non-agency securitization trusts, opting instead to study the impact of such an agreement as well as other alternatives to assist underwater homeowners. Opposition by the San Francisco City Controller and the mortgage banking industry has forced John Avalos, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors, to scale back his partnership proposal. Avalos laid out...

What do Fannie and Freddie really think of nonbanks? Read their SEC filings.

The 3 percent downpayment mortgages announced this week by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be a better deal than similar FHA financing for stronger-credit borrowers, according to analysts. Final details of the conventional 97 loan-to-value ratio products were released this week to mixed but mostly favorable reviews. Although aimed at first-time homebuyers in Fannie’s MyCommunityMortgage and Freddie’s Home Possible programs, the products are also available for refinances of existing GSE loans.Only 30-year, fixed-rate loans are eligible and the home must be the borrower’s primary residence. In Fannie’s case, borrowers who go through MCM would pay lower upfront loan-level price adjustments. Freddie requires that the loans go through Home Possible. Analysts with FBR Capital Markets said the government-sponsored enterprises’ ...