The Trump administration has proposed deep budget cuts in 2018 for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but whether the agencies’ critical housing insurance programs would be affected is unclear. The cuts are part of the administration’s plan to reduce non-defense discretionary spending dramatically in order to fund increased defense spending and President Trump’s southern border wall, and to bring down a projected $9.4 trillion U.S. deficit over the next decade.Released this week, the preliminary 2018 budget seeks $40.7 billion in gross discretionary funding for HUD, $6.2 billion or 13.2 percent lower than the department’s approved spending in 2017. The $47.3 billion in discretionary budget authority enacted for fiscal 2017 does not include offsetting receipts from FHA and Ginnie Mae, which lowered the congressionally appropriated cost for ...
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has offered Senate lawmakers some recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the National Flood Insurance Program as Congress considers reauthorization, including increasing mortgage borrowers’ access to private flood insurance. Testifying this week during a Senate hearing, Roy Wright, deputy associate administrator of the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration, urged the Senate Committee on Banking and Urban Affairs to reauthorize the NFIP before it expires on Sept. 30, 2017, and to extend it for multiple years. FIMA directs FEMA’s risk management, mitigation and flood-insurance programs. The stability of the real estate and mortgage markets depend on an “on-time, multi-year reauthorization,” said Wright. “All federally-backed mortgage lenders are required to verify that properties in special flood-hazard areas (SFHA) have ...
Security National Mortgage Co. of Salt Lake City has paid $4.25 million to the Department of Housing and Urban Development to settle allegations of failing to comply with FHA loan requirements. Security National, a retail lender, has been an FHA-approved direct endorsement lender since October 1993, the year it was founded. The settlement resolves a joint civil investigation by the HUD Office of the Inspector General, Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey into Security National’s FHA origination and underwriting practices in connection with 100 FHA-insured loans. As part of the settlement, the lender “agreed it engaged in certain conduct in connection with its origination and underwriting of the loans.” The HUD OIG provided no details about the investigation. The OIG said the loans that were certified as compliant would not have been insured had ...
HUD Secretary Ben Carson Launches National Listening Tour in Detroit. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson began a national listening tour March 15 at Benjamin Carson High School in Detroit. Carson’s three-day visit to his hometown gives him an opportunity to hear directly from HUD field personnel and stakeholders who rely upon and support public housing. This week, President Trump released his proposed preliminary FY 2018 budget, which showed among other things a drastic $6.2 billion reduction in funding for public housing assistance and affordable housing. HUD did not release an itinerary of Carson’s listening tour. IG Seeks Changes to Ginnie Mae’s Management Hierarchy, Staffing. Ginnie Mae’s outdated organizational structure and staff levels have made it difficult for the agency to properly monitor and mitigate the risk posed by the increasing number of nonbanks participating in ...
A recent decision by a federal judge in Detroit dismissing portions of the Department of Justice’s FHA-related claims against Quicken Loans will shrink the lender’s liability under the False Claims Act, according to a legal expert. In a decision rendered March 9 on the closely watched case, U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith narrowed the scope and timeframe for which the DOJ can pursue any recovery or settlement against Quicken Loans for FHA losses allegedly due to faulty underwriting and loan default performance. It is the first major decision since the DOJ’s suit was transferred from federal court in Washington, DC, to federal court in Detroit last year. The DOJ and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General began...
A data management and analytics firm is offering a service that can identify a lender’s existing borrowers who “need” an offer for a cash-out refinance. Altair Customer Intelligence said it offers lenders a number of ways to retain existing borrowers. While cash-out refinance activity is well below the levels seen before the financial crisis, many borrowers have built up equity in their homes in recent years, making cash-outs an option. Steve Ferrell, ?inbound marketing manager at Altair, said...
Homeowners over the age of 65 rarely use their mortgages to access their home equity, according to a new study by the Urban Institute and Fannie Mae. Even as a large number of seniors reported concerns about finances during retirement, Fannie noted that just 6 percent of older adult homeowners are interested in tapping their home equity. Relatively few seniors use FHA reverse mortgages, closed-end seconds, home-equity lines of credit and cash-out refinances to tap built-up home equity. One reason seniors hesitate...
Early on, after the lender was sued, Quicken even threatened to leave the FHA program but never did and instead has dominated the FHA “direct” lending market…
As the mortgage industry waits for a definitive resolution to the legal dispute between PHH Mortgage and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, industry experts tried to glean some guidance on the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act from the bureau’s recent consent orders involving nonbank Prospect Mortgage and some of its partners. Earlier this year, the CFPB brought a $3.5 million enforcement action against Prospect, accusing the firm of illegal kickbacks for mortgage business referrals from two real estate brokers, and in an unusual twist, a mortgage servicing operation. The bureau also acted against ReMax Gold Coast and Keller Williams Mid-Willamette, the brokers, and Planet Home Lending, the mortgage servicer – all of whom it accused of taking illegal kickbacks from the lender. During a webinar this week sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, Rodrigo Alba, senior vice president of mortgage finance and senior regulatory counsel for the American Bankers Association, said...
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