The Obama administration has sent a message to the mortgage industry that it wants to expand the Home Affordable Refinance Program by changing the eligibility date for high loan-to-value and underwater borrowers who want to refinance loans financed by the government-sponsored enterprises. According to members of the Mortgage Bankers Association who attended a recent pow-wow at the White House, the administration wants to push the eligibility date for HARP into mid-2010 or so. Currently, a mortgage eligible for the program has to have a securitization date prior to June 2009. In theory, this would increase...
The White House wants to change the HARP eligibility date, making more underwater borrowers eligible for the program, Inside Mortgage Finance has learned.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recent extension of the Home Affordable Refinance Program has “significantly lessened” the already slim prospects of any so-called HARP 3.0 legislation advancing through Congress, say analysts. The Responsible Homeowner Refinancing Act of 2013, by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, and Barbara Boxer, D-CA, had already been struggling to gain traction in Congress amid the steady volume of HARP refis in recent months and Republican resistance to expanding current HARP eligibility requirements. HARP had been scheduled to expire at the end of this year before the FHFA’s directive to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac earlier this month to extend the refi program through Dec. 31, 2015.
Private mortgage insurers provided coverage on some $8.2 billion of mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the first quarter of 2013 that had loan-to-value ratios exceeding 105 percent, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of loan-level data. Private MIs had little choice in the matter since the Home Affordable Refinance Program allows underwater borrowers to refinance without getting additional MI, or any mortgage insurance if the original loan wasn’t insured. In fact, Fannie and Freddie securitized a total of $27.1 billion of mortgages with LTV ratios over 105 percent, most of which did not have insurance. But most private MI coverage was placed...[Includes one data chart]
About 14.1 percent of the mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the first quarter of 2013 had private mortgage insurance coverage, but those loans were sold by some 1,631 different lenders, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. Although Wells Fargo ranked as the top seller of MI-insured loans to the government-sponsored enterprises, with $9.85 billion in volume, over half of those mortgages were originated by correspondent lenders that may have played a role in deciding which private MI to use. Looking only at retail originations, Quicken Loans was...[Includes one data chart]
Bank of America earlier this year finally settled its long-running dispute with Fannie Mae over buyback demands, an agreement that may help open a window to the government-sponsored enterprise that has been limited to refinance loans. During the first quarter of 2013, BofA sold $6.52 billion of mortgages to Fannie – all of them refinance loans. The company hasn’t sold purchase-money mortgages to the GSE since early 2012, when the two broke off new transactions that didn’t involve refinancing of existing Fannie loans serviced by the bank. In fact, BofA only sold...
Potentially conflicting federal regulations over mortgage lending practices and standards from different government agencies increasingly appear to have the industry in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t position. During a webinar on fair lending challenges this week sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, Melanie Brody, a partner at K&L Gates, highlighted one of the challenges the industry faces in navigating between the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s new discriminatory effect rule and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay rule. “The problem is that ability-to-repay and qualified mortgage requirements add up...
Perhaps, the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance fund won't need a bailout after all: In 1Q delinquencies fell by just over 9 percent, according to exclusive figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance publications.
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