Are investors in Ocwen jumping for joy now that word is out that NYDFS chief Benjamin Lawsky might be leaving next year?

The Fannie product also had less expensive mortgage insurance and allowed the borrower to cancel the policy once the LTV reached 80 percent of the home’s value.

However, these same sources contend that Ocwen was successful in selling a smaller package of Ginnie MSRs.

Disparate Impact Theory of Legal Liability Struck Down. Last week, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dealt a heavy blow to the position of the Department of Housing and Urban Development – as well as the CFPB – that disparate impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act. In American Insurance Association v. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the judge struck down HUD’s disparate impact rule, determining that the Fair Housing Act prohibits “disparate treatment only.” In promulgating its disparate impact rule, the court said HUD exceeded its authority under the Administrative Procedures Act. “The ruling is in line with what we have long believed the law to be and consistent with what we argued in ...

The MBS gain was lopsided: Ginnie MBS issuance jumped 10.8 percent from September to October, while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suffered declines.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will not take on the new points-and-fees cure provision for qualified mortgages adopted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The agency is concerned that lenders might inadvertently violate the FHA’s statutory 3.5 percent downpayment requirement. HUD adopted other changes in the CFPB’s revised final rule on ability to repay and qualified mortgages (ATR/QM) to maintain consistency but saw no need for any further ability to cure points-and-fees errors. Reimbursement of any excess points and fees to the borrower could take away from the mandatory 3.5 percent downpayment and render the loan ineligible for FHA insurance, the agency explained in a notice published in the Nov. 3 Federal Register. HUD said it would provide lender guidance under its own QM rule on ...

Reinstating the government-sponsored enterprises’ conventional 97 percent loan-to-value mortgage programs would benefit first-time homebuyers and borrowers with little or no cash reserves for a downpayment but adversely affect the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, according to analysts. If limited to first-time homebuyers, a conventional 97 LTV loan would offer some new homeowners better home loan financing than FHA and provide greater access to mortgage credit, said analysts with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. For years, Fannie Mae offered conventional 97 LTV loans through its MyCommmunityMortgage to help first-time homebuyers purchase a home with only a 3 percent downpayment. It was a better alternative to FHA’s main product, which required a 3.5 percent downpayment. The Fannie product also had less ...

Ginnie Mae servicing bumped up slightly in the third quarter after an uneventful prior quarter as FHA purchase activity continued to drag, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of agency data. Servicing volume rose quarter over quarter by 1.4 percent. On an annual basis, volume increased 4.6 percent from the same period a year ago. Ginnie Mae servicers ended the quarter with a total of $1.48 trillion in unpaid principal balance, up from $1.46 trillion in the previous quarter. The top three servicers saw volume drop on both quarterly and year-over-year bases. Wells Fargo remained as top servicer of Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities, closing out the quarter with $422.4 million, down 0.8 percent from the previous quarter and down 0.6 percent from the prior year. The mega-servicer dominated the Ginnie market with a 28.6 percent market share. JPMorgan Chase carved out a 10.1 percent market share with ... [1 chart]

The real estate industry is urging the FHA to tighten up its pre-foreclosure sale process and be more vigilant before referring loans to the single-fThe real estate industry is urging the FHA to tighten up its pre-foreclosure sale process and be more amily loan sales program (SFLS). Commenting on the proposed section on servicing of the FHA Single Family Policy handbook, the National Association of Realtors expressed concern that the FHA is auctioning large pools of mortgages without considering the investor’s ability to achieve neighborhood stabilization goals such as homeownership preservation and affordable housing. The first step for FHA to improve servicing and pre-foreclosure efforts is to ensure mortgage servicers’ full compliance with FHA loss-mitigation requirements before referring loans to the SFLS, the NAR suggested. In addition, the FHA should ...

FHA single-family mortgage originations fell slightly in August from July as the agency’s home-purchase volume continued to falter, agency data showed. In August, the latest month for which FHA origination data are available, forward-loan originations totaled $12.6 billion, down 3.2 percent from the prior month and down 25.1 percent from the same period last year. Purchase mortgages made up 81.1 percent of all FHA-insured single-family loans originated during August, while refinances accounted for the remainder. Fixed-rate mortgages were the product of choice, as they have been in previous periods. Quicken Loans relied more on refis than on purchase lending (38 percent of new loans) as it closed the month with $534.8 million in new production, down 8.5 percent from July. Nonetheless, it was good enough for a 4.2 percent FHA market share. Second-place Wells Fargo’s total production for the month was ... [1 chart]