The Department of Veterans Affairs has called upon holders of VA-guaranteed single-family mortgage loans to extend forbearance to distressed homeowners affected by the severe storms and flooding in Louisiana and Texas. In recent guidance, the VA described measures VA lenders may employ to provide relief to disaster-stricken homeowners. The agency recommended careful counseling to see whether borrower difficulties are related to the storms or have been the result of other events. If appropriate, prepayments may be reapplied to cure or prevent a borrower default. Servicers also may consider loan modification without VA’s prior approval if certain regulatory conditions are met. Although the holder of the loan is ultimately responsible for determining when to initiate foreclosure or complete termination action, the VA has requested a 90-day freeze on ...
The California Reinvestment Coalition last week called upon the Department of Housing and Urban Development to impose a moratorium to prevent CIT Group and its servicing subsidiary, Financial Freedom, from initiating any more reverse mortgage foreclosures. The CRC’s request is based in part on data it obtained from HUD indicating an unusually high foreclosure rate for Financial Freedom/CIT Group.According to the data, Financial Freedom’s 39 percent share of reverse mortgage foreclosures since April 2009 is more than two times greater than the company’s estimated market share. The CRC began looking into Financial Freedom’s foreclosure history after receiving complaints from a number of widowed homeowners and other heirs about Freedom’s foreclosure practices, said Kevin Stein, CRC associate director. Stein said the CRC filed a data request under the ...
Departing FHA Executive. Single Family Deputy Assistant Secretary Kathleen Zadaresky is leaving the FHA for the private sector. Zadaresky is credited for the FHA’s new Single Family Policy Handbook, reform of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program, and the single-family loan-quality assessment methodology (Defect Taxonomy). Zadaresky’s deputy, Bob Mulderig, was named as her replacement when she leaves at the end of this month. Mulderig came from the Department of Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, where he recently served as acting manager of the Capital Magnet Program. 95 Year-Old Borrower Files Class-Action Suit Against Reverse Mortgage Lender. The National Consumer Law Center has filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of a 95-year old plaintiff and other seniors against Dallas-based Nationstar Mortgage, doing business as ...
An estimated $24.52 billion of GSE loans were delivered into MBS during 1Q16 with the servicing rights being taken over by a servicer not affiliated with the loan seller.
Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie continue to dominate in multifamily mortgage securitization, capturing a combined 93.6 percent of the market in the first quarter.
Christopher Whalen, senior managing director at KBRA, noted that most of the megabanks “are showing lower mortgage banking lines, which includes MBS desk P&L [profit and loss]. Gain-on-sale is also down about 50 percent year-over-year, so that’s another factor in the balance.”
Declining interest rates introduced considerable uncertainty into the valuation of mortgage servicing rights during the first quarter of 2016, leading to a decline in bulk transfers of agency MSR, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis. Bulk sales of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae servicing rights totaled just $36.16 billion during the first three months of this year, a 37.2 percent drop from the fourth quarter of 2015. That was down ... [Includes one data chart]