The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau expects to undertake a project to refine and integrate disclosure requirements under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act for reverse mortgages to improve consumers’ understanding of the product. The In a recent 231-page study submitted to Congress, the CFPB said consumers are still confused about how reverse mortgages work, despite the required disclosures and industry efforts to educate the public on this type of equity-based lending. The rising-balance and falling-equity nature of reverse mortgages is particularly ....

The Department of Housing and Urban Development said it has received $1.2 billion in recent settlements with large mortgage lenders and servicers but HUD’s internal watchdog, which did much of the legwork in the investigations, reveals a much smaller amount. According to recent audit reports published by HUD’s Office of the Inspector General, only Bank of America and Flagstar Bank have made payments under settlement agreements with HUD and the Department of Justice to resolve government claims. In separate memos to HUD’s Office of General Counsel last month, Kim Randall, director of the HUD OIG Civil Fraud Division, sought clearance to ...

Two lenders lost their approval to underwrite and originate FHA loans under Credit Watch while two others may be ordered to indemnify the Department of Housing and Urban Development for potential losses on several ineligible FHA-insured loans. HUD recently stripped Community Central Mortgage Co. of Mount Clemens, MI, and Strategic Mortgage Co. of Columbus, OH, of their direct endorsement approval because of the exceedingly high default and claim rates of FHA-insured loans they originated in their business areas. The Credit Watch Termination Initiative allows HUD to terminate a direct endorsement agreement with any FHA lender if ...

Endorsements fell in May at the two top FHA shops in the country even as the market’s total production of loans with FHA insurance increased both on a monthly and year-over-year basis, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of FHA data. Wells Fargo, the country’s largest FHA lender, saw its May volume fall 14.6 percent to $1.94 billion from April while second-ranked Quicken Loans saw production fall even farther by 22.5 percent to $1.16 billion over the same period. Year over year, Wells Fargo’s FHA volume fell 5.9 percent in May while for Quicken Loans, the story was different ... (1 chart)

HUD FY 2013 Budget. On June 29, the House approved the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s FY 2013 budget. Although a number of amendments was considered, the funding levels for HUD programs remained unchanged from those passed by the House Appropriations Committee. New commitments under the FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund in FY 2013 include $400 million for loan guarantees and $50 million for direct loans. The General and Special Risk Program gets $25 billion for guaranteed loans and $20 million for direct loans. A total of $500 billion for the Ginnie Mae securitization program would be available until ...

Despite a late surge in refinance business for seriously underwater home mortgages, new business volume at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac declined by 10.2 percent during the second quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking. The two government-sponsored enterprises securitized a total of $273.95 billion of conventional single-family mortgages during the second quarter. Thanks to the huge $305.21 billion of GSE business recorded during the first three months of 2012, the market was still 39.3 percent ahead of the pace set during the first half of last year. Refinance activity...

A trio of Senate Democrats is squeezing the only private mortgage insurer not fully onboard with the Obama administration’s recent enhancements to the Home Affordable Refinance Program. Last week, Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, Robert Menendez, D-NJ, and Herb Kohl, D-WI, dispatched a critical letter to United Guaranty Corp. CEO Kim Garland. The letter came attached with a set of eight questions for the MI and a less than subtle hint that the mortgage-insurance unit of Ameri-can International Group Inc. should get with the program just like everybody else. “Despite the industry consensus that removing...

Roughly 27 percent of outstanding Ginnie Mae MBS pools are eligible for the FHA’s revised streamline refinancing program, which could translate to $36 billion in new annual Ginnie Mae issuance, according to a report from Barclays Research. Barclays analysts estimated that about $293.0 billion of Ginnie Mae’s $1 trillion-plus 30-year loan pools were originated before May 2009. About 79 percent of the collateral backing these pools are FHA loans, which suggests that as much as $232.0 billion could qualify...

Leading Senate Democrats and Republicans have been moving cautiously to advance legislation to expand the Home Affordable Refinance Program, although industry observers say the odds are long the measure will see meaningful Congressional action before the legislative clock runs out. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, the committee’s ranking member, have been working on an agreement to ensure that the proposed amendments to the legislation in a markup would be strictly narrowed to making changes to HARP. However, Shelby is pushing to permit any provision on housing finance to be considered...

Fueled by a pent-up gusher of refinance activity on deeply underwater mortgages, the Home Affordable Refinance Program appears on pace to set a new record high in the second quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. Based on loan-level data through the midway point in June, securitization of HARP loans by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is expected to reach an estimated $53.3 billion in the second quarter. That would represent a 27.1 percent increase over the previous record, $42.0 billion, set in the first three months of this year. A big chunk of the increase is...(Includes two data charts)