Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans remain widely available, thanks to the independent lenders that rallied to plug the gaps as major players bolted from the reverse mortgage market, an industry executive told lawmakers this week. In testimony during a House subcommittee hearing on FHA regulation of the HECM market, Jeffrey Lewis, CEO of Generation Mortgage Co., said MetLifes departure from the market and closure of its traditional mortgage-origination business say nothing about the value of the HECM product to consumers. Lewis said MetLifes decision was a strategic one and had nothing to do with ... (1 chart)
Deutsche Bank and its mortgage subsidiary MortgageIT this week agreed to pay $202 million to settle civil claims that they engaged in a decade of misconduct and deception to qualify risky mortgage loans for FHA insurance. The civil fraud lawsuit was brought against the two companies by the Department of Justice as a result of a referral from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Filed in May last year, the government lawsuit sought damages and civil penalties under the False Claims Act. The suit alleges that MortgageIT, which Deutsche Bank acquired in 2007, used its authority as a direct endorsement lender (DEL) to ...
Genworth Mortgage Insurance has named Martin Klein as acting chief executive officer in the wake of former CEO Michael Fraziers resignation last week. Klein is and remains the companys chief financial officer. James Riepe was named nonexecutive chairman of the board. NMI Holdings, Inc., has raised $550 million in a private placement to provide mortgage insurance on loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The company is in the process of obtaining approvals from state insurance regulators and the two government-sponsored enterprises. The MI unit will be called ...
Private mortgage insurers appear to be holding on to the gains in market share they began to accumulate in the middle of last year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. An estimated $108.61 billion of home mortgages originated in the first quarter of this year carried primary mortgage insurance, an increase of 9.4 percent from the previous quarter. That compared to a 3.8 percent drop in total single-family mortgage originations over that period. The apparent jump in primary MI market penetration to 28.2 percent is skewed somewhat by the process for...(Includes two data charts)
New issuance of agency MBS declined sharply in April as refinance activity in the primary market began to slow down despite concerted efforts by many lenders to ramp up Home Affordable Refinance Program business. A new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking reveals that a total of $109.2 billion of single-family agency MBS was issued last month, down 29.2 percent from March. It was the lowest monthly output since October of last year, when the refi market started to gather momentum. The decline was all attributable to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which pick up more refinance...(Includes one data chart)
In an effort to aggressively expand the recently retooled Home Affordable Refinance Program, Fannie Mae is encouraging lenders to make the most of HARP 2.0s looser rules on marketing directly to eligible borrowers. The government-sponsored enterprise created outreach materials to help jump-start lenders marketing efforts to would-be borrowers who arent aware they may qualify for a HARP refinance. Fannie Mae developed these model HARP Materials to facilitate borrower consideration of HARP refinancing options that may be available through participating lenders and servicers...
Dont expect the long-awaited White House plan to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac anytime soon, an Obama administration official told lawmakers last week. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan told members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee that the administration has made significant strides toward bringing private capital back into the housing market without help from Congress. However, the GSE overhaul promised for the first of the year needs more work, he said.
A national consumer advocacy group, whose own investigation of FHA credit overlays spurred a federal probe of nearly two dozen FHA lenders, said it is keeping an eye on Fannie Maes and Freddie Macs use of loan-level price adjusters as a potential discriminatory lending practice. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition said its still waiting to hear from the Department of Housing and Urban Development about the results of multiple investigations HUD launched in December 2010 after NCRC found that 22 lenders set borrower credit scores as high as 640 for FHA loans, even though the FHA guarantees loans with scores as low as 580.
Mortgage lenders that were less than enthusiastic about the first version of the refinance program for underwater Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers now see the revised initiative as a significant opportunity for 2012 and beyond. A recent Federal Reserve survey of senior loan officers revealed that 39 percent of large banks have begun actively soliciting Home Affordable Refinance Program business, although participation rates are lower among smaller institutions. Officials from M&T Bank and SunTrust Mortgage said during a recent webinar sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance Publications that they...
Federal Reserve Board.Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.National Mortgage Servicing Standards Continue. The interagency group of federal banking regulators continues to work to develop prudential standards for mortgage servicing activities in parallel with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus initiative, which focuses on certain aspects of mortgage servicing...