There was a healthy flow of mortgage servicing rights during the first quarter of 2018, but it’s unclear whether this year will match the prodigious transaction volume recorded in 2017. Transfers of single-family agency servicing rights totaled an estimated $121.76 billion in the first three months of 2018, according to an exclusive Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of mortgage-backed securities data from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae ... [Includes three data charts]
The Department of Veterans Affairs home-loan guaranty program continued to account for most of the growth in the Ginnie Mae servicing business during the first quarter of 2018, a new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis reveals. Total Ginnie mortgage-backed securities outstanding rose to $1.940 trillion as of the end of March, including multifamily MBS and securities backed by FHA reverse mortgages. Some $1.795 trillion of that amount was traditional single-family mortgages, a 1.1 percent increase from the end of last year. The forward-mortgage Ginnie market grew by 7.3 percent over the past 12 months. The amount of VA loans in Ginnie pools was up 13.1 percent from March 2017, nearing the $600.0 billion mark. By comparison, the FHA segment of the Ginnie market was up 4.7 percent from a year ago, hitting $1.085 trillion. Loan performance generally improved in both the ... [Charts]
The Department of Veterans Affairs has drafted a proposed rule to curb predatory loan churning. The draft rule is “well on its way through concurrence with VA and the Office of Management and Budget,” said Jeff London, director of the VA Loan Guaranty Service, during an interview at the agency’s 19t Annual Lender Conference in Miami recently. He did not specify a publication date but said the proposed rule will be published “fairly soon.” Churning, or serial refinancing, involves multiple refinances of the same loan within short periods with no clear benefit to the borrower. In addition, churning triggers rapid prepayments in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities to the detriment of investors and makes it difficult to price MBS appropriately. London declined to provide details about the rule’s content but said veterans and taxpayers would be protected. VA looked at a range of things that were common in the ...
A general overhaul of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Loan Electronic Reporting Interface is underway to convert it into a full service, end-to-end system capable of handling every phase of the loan process. Work on VALERI began in 2017, with the aim of integrating all business lines – loan origination, property valuations, and mortgage servicing – into what VA officials view as an automated underwriting system. “We are potentially looking at the redesigned VALERI as an automated underwriting system, an end-to-end system designed to better serve veterans and their families, lenders, servicers and appraisers,” said Jeff London, director of the VA Loan Guaranty Service (LGS), during an interview at the recent VA lender conference in Miami. The VALERI application has been used solely for servicing for the last 10 years. Since 2008, on a monthly basis, servicers have been uploading electronic data ...
Ginnie Mae is considering a tiered rating system to ensure that all participants in its mortgage securities program have sufficient liquidity and capital to meet their counterparty obligations. The agency is still fleshing out the idea of an “A-tier” issuer, which would likely develop into a policy in the near future, said Michael Bright, executive vice president and chief operating officer, during a recent interview with Inside FHA/VA Lending. “An A-tier issuer would be [a company that] has gone above and beyond in helping put together for us a risk management and liquidity plan that does not rely on liquidity providers, and whose defect and cure rates are low,” he explained. Such issuer/servicers also would be well capitalized. Ginnie is developing the metrics for such a system, as well as incentives for the A-tier issuers, Bright said He added that top-rated firms would be eligible for “concierge services” from the ...
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