The Trump White House has yet to fill key positions at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and agencies that fall under the HUD umbrella, including the FHA and Ginnie Mae. According to industry officials who claim to have some knowledge of the process, the administration is seriously considering Pam Patenaude to be the deputy HUD secretary. Patenaude is president of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families. She served as HUD assistant secretary for community, planning and development during the George W. Bush administration. Meanwhile, Michael Bright has been mentioned as a candidate to be the next president of Ginnie Mae. Bright currently serves as director, Center for Financial Markets at the Milken Institute. During his career he has worked for mortgage lender/servicer PennyMac, investment banking firm BlackRock and ...

Judgment Imposed on Former President and Founder of Loan Correspondent Firm. A federal court in Chicago ordered the former president and founder of MDR Mortgage of Palatine, IL, to pay more than $10 million to the Department of Housing and Urban Development for submitting false certifications on FHA loans. The HUD Inspector General Office and the Department of Justice withheld the identity of the former bank official, who was found liable under the False Claims Act and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act. The violations allegedly involved loans the FHA insured from 2006 through August 7, 2008, the period during which MDR submitted the allegedly false certifications. The DOJ identified 237 loans that MDR processed during the period in question. The loans defaulted and resulted in $3.4 million in claims paid by the FHA. In addition, MDR provided annual verifications to ...

More CFPB examiners means more CFPB exams? Maybe, maybe not...

“There are a couple of big banks looking at FHA again,” said the consultant, but he declined to identify the shops, citing client confidentiality.

Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie securitized $156.80 billion of refi loans during 1Q17, down 35.1 percent sequentially, according to Inside MBS & ABS.

The Department of Veterans Affairs this week expressed willingness to work with Congress and mortgage industry participants to find a solution to the agency’s ongoing appraiser shortage. Testifying during a hearing held by the House Veterans Affairs’ Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity, representatives of the VA Home Loan Guaranty Service, the National Association of Realtors, the Appraisal Institute and Clear Capital said the shortage of appraisers has led to long delays in obtaining appraisals and loan closings, as well as high appraisal costs. The VA appraisal program has been...

The top five FHA servicers are: Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Cenlar Federal Savings Bank, U.S. Bank and PennyMac Loan Services.

The ultimate goal of the LRS is to reduce lenders’ liability risk and minimize overlays…

Servicing brokers believe that the relatively strong showing in Ginnie transfers in the fourth quarter might have been an aberration…

Pete Mills of MBA said the revised policy was intended to “take some of the economics out” of serial refinancing…