Reverse Mortgage Solutions, a HECM lender bought by Walter Investment Management Corp. last fall, has received a $100 million warehouse line of credit from Royal Bank of Scotland, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The line is legally structured as a master repurchase agreement. However, it is also considered uncommitted and matures in February of 2014. RMS will use the money to fund new originations of HUD-backed home equity conversion mortgages. Several of the nations largest banks have exited the HECM space the past two years, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America. A handful of nonbanks have moved ...
Congress has expressed interest in an industry proposal for new shared-risk arrangements involving private mortgage insurers and the FHA to cut the governments exposure to losses and help protect future FHA borrowers from getting into loans they cannot afford. The proposal was presented in separate testimonies during recent House and Senate committee hearings on FHA solvency and the need for reforms to strengthen and protect the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund and avoid any potential bailout by taxpayers. In a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, Teresa Bryce Bazemore, president of Radian Guaranty, urged...
Mortgage originations last year increased by some $435 billion from 2011 and virtually all of that gain came from refinance activity. Unless housing activity begins to grow significantly faster, mortgage lending volume appears likely to drop significantly in 2013. Prodded along by the suddenly successful Home Affordable Refinance Program, refi lending increased by $403 billion last year, a 41.9 percent increase over 2011. And although a number of indicators suggested that housing sales were beginning to firm up, home-purchase mortgage originations were up just 6.3 percent a gain of $32 billion compared to the previous year. In fact, purchase-mortgage originations have been...[Includes three data charts]
The Mortgage Bankers Association urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to give all FHA loans a conclusive presumption of compliance with qualified mortgage requirements and to revise the QM annual percentage rate/average prime offer rate (APR/APOR) threshold for FHA loans at least until the agency issues its own QM rule. Failure to make the adjustments could severely restrict the availability of FHA loans to lower-income first-time homebuyers, which is the FHAs traditional market, the trade group said. In comments on the CFPBs final ability-to-repay rule, the MBA said...
Citadel Servicing has raised $200 million in capital to originate residential subprime mortgages. Does this mean subprime lending is "back"? Answer: yes and no.