Legislation that would delay foreclosures on mortgages of certain military servicemembers, retirees and surviving spouses of soldiers and sailors who died on active duty would cost taxpayers more to enact and implement rather than as a revenue raiser, according to Congressional Budget Office. The CBO estimates that enacting S. 3322, the Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2012, would increase direct spending by $16 million over the 2013-2022 period. Implementing it would hike discretionary costs by ...

A nonsupervised Arizona FHA lender whose high default and claims rate triggered a supervisory audit earlier found itself in a deeper mess for improper underwriting on a number of FHA streamline refinanced loans that resulted in losses to the FHA insurance fund. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Inspector General found that Allen Mortgage of Centennial Park, AZ, violated HUD’s regulations , procedures, and instructions in the underwriting of FHA-insured loans. Specifically, of the 73 streamlined refinance mortgage loans reviewed by the IG, 23 were ...

VA Home Loan Program Celebrates 20-Millionth Loan Beneficiary. The Department of Veterans Affairs this week commemorated the 20-millionth recipient of a VA loan under the agency’s Home Loan Guaranty Program. Agency officials held a ceremony at the Woodbridge, VA, home of the loan’s recipient, Mrs. Elizabeth Carpenter, whose husband, Capt. Matthew Carpenter, passed away in 2010. Since 1944 as part of the original GI Bill of Rights, the VA has been providing guarantees to 30-year mortgage loans with low interest rates and has guaranteed ...

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae officials pledged to continue efforts to build a better secondary market system while coping with the business challenges of dealing with an increasingly diverse universe of lenders delivering loans directly to the agencies. “Fannie Mae is a different company today,” said Timothy Mayopoulos, president and CEO of the firm, during a panel session at this week’s annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association. He said 80 percent of the government-sponsored enterprise’s upper management has been promoted to their roles or hired since the GSE went into conservatorship four years ago. Half of the company’s 7,000 employees have been hired since then. “The people of Fannie Mae today are...

Congress will act on a bipartisan basis after the November elections to approve legislative changes to the Home Affordable Refinance Program, a well-connected industry participant predicted, although some Republicans in Congress remain opposed to a bill crafted by Senate Democrats Robert Menendez, NJ, and Barbara Boxer, CA. Lewis Ranieri, chairman and founding partner of Ranieri Partners, said this week that he fully expects Congress to approve S. 3522, the “Responsible Homeowner Refinancing Act,” after the upcoming elections. He suggested that Republicans have been unwilling to pass the bill due to fears that approving an Obama administration proposal could hurt their re-election efforts. Ranieri made...

Mortgages originated by lenders’ retail production programs accounted for 60.7 percent of single-family loans securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the third quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis. Although many lenders have made strategic choices to focus on retail and scale back or abandon the wholesale market, a key factor in the dominance of retail originations was the heavy volume of refinance lending. Servicers continue to retain a significant share of their customers who refinance, and in programs like the Home Affordable Refinance Program for underwater Fannie and Freddie borrowers, retail captures the overwhelming share of the business. Loan level data from the government-sponsored enterprises do reveal, however, that mortgage brokers are contributing to the increase in HARP lending. Brokers tend...[Includes two data charts]

Just two institutions – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – end up securitizing the vast majority of conventional home loans, but a large universe of lenders deliver a significantly diverse supply of loans to the government-sponsored enterprises. A new Inside Mortgage Finance special report based on loan-level securities disclosures reveals that 1,848 different institutions delivered single-family mortgages to the two GSEs during the third quarter. They ranged in size from Wells Fargo, which delivered nearly a quarter of mortgages securitized by Fannie and Freddie during the period, to Wisconsin-based Universal Mortgage Corp., which sold one small $39,000 loan to Fannie during the period. The report, GSE Seller Profile: 3Q12, shows...

While President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Gov. Mitt Romney, differ widely on key issues, both candidates appear to agree on the need to reduce the government’s role in housing and bring private capital back to the mortgage market, industry observers say. Nothing much has been said in public forums or in the first presidential debate (except for a brief mention of the “qualified mortgage” proposal) about the housing issue, but observers say their positions on FHA may not be far apart. Obama’s approach to the housing crisis is ...

Despite problems associated with the program, the FHA 203(k) Rehabilitation Mortgage Program has seen some modest production gains during the last few quarters, according to an Inside FHA Lending analysis of FHA data. Top FHA 203(k) lenders reported $1.8 billion in total originations during the first six months of 2012, with the top five lenders accounting for 46.9 percent of production. Production rose 8.1 percent from the first quarter to the second, from $851.2 million to $920.5 million. Purchase fixer-uppers comprised ... [Includes 1 chart]

The FHA is starting to lose business to private mortgage insurers and the conventional mortgage market because it is no longer the cheaper alternative, a recent industry survey indicated. Numbers released by the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey show consumer preference for conventional home loans rising as a growing number of homebuyers, particularly current homeowners, used mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to finance home purchases in August. The survey noted that current homeowners increased their use of mortgages in June this year while investor participation began ...