Two of the nation’s largest reverse mortgage lending platforms are on the auction block with a third contemplating an exit via a servicing sale. Coupled with higher upfront premiums on the product, all is not well with the sector.

But while Fannie production slumped 11.5 percent, Freddie saw a robust 23.9 percent jump in new issuance in October…

While the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s newly implemented FHA Loan Review System and its defect taxonomy has reduced lender exposure to false-claims risk, the system needs more tweaks to become fully efficient, says the Mortgage Bankers Association. While acknowledging great improvement in lender certainty and clarity regarding False Claims Act risk, the MBA wants to see “assignment-specific remedies” for each tier of defect severity. And though lenders say ...

The Department of the Treasury, in the third of four reports related to an executive review of federal financial regulations, urged the Department of Housing and Urban Development to reconsider its use of disparate impact policy in the insurance industry. Released last week, the latest report focused on asset management and insurance and the regulatory structure of financial entities and products in each of these structures. Treasury called upon HUD to reevaluate its use of the ...

There continues to be some nervousness about VA receivables because of streamlined refinancings, although regulators are trying to curb abuses in the program.

Look for another reverse mortgage lender to hit the auction block...

Aggressive refinancing now occurs immediately after the six-month window has expired, as some of the activity may have shifted into the custom pool market…

Some 6.03 percent of FHA loans were 30-to-60 days past due as of the end of the third quarter, up from 4.51 percent in June.

FHA and VA loan performance deteriorated during the third quarter of 2017, a period when the Ginnie Mae servicing market continued to expand. Ginnie had a record $1.749 trillion of single-family mortgage-backed securities outstanding at the nine-month mark in 2017, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside FHA/VA Lending. That was up 2.2 percent from mid-year and 8.5 percent higher than September 2016. Ginnie servicing has been the fastest-growing part of the market for the past few years. That’s largely because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac typically see more refinance business, which tends to churn the supply of servicing outstanding more than grow it. The VA side of the government-insured market again was the fastest-growing component, as the dollar volume of VA loans in Ginnie pools rose 3.7 percent during the third quarter. That was more than double the growth rate in the ... [Charts]

The FHA lost ground to private mortgage insurers in the purchase-mortgage market during the third quarter of 2017, according to an analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance.The government-sponsored enterprises securitized $64.59 billion of purchase mortgages with private MI in the third quarter, up 28.5 percent from the prior quarter. This far greater than the 9.5 percent increase in FHA purchase loans delivered into Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities during the same period. Although the FHA program remained a favorite among first-time homebuyers, private mortgage insurers saw a substantial gain in the segment. In the third quarter, first-time homebuyers comprised 74.1 percent of FHA purchase loans, but the dollar volume of such loans pooled in Ginnie MBS rose just 9.1 percent, data showed. On the other hand, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw their insured first-timer ...