Industry groups urged policymakers to use caution in considering legislation to reduce FHA loan limits, require higher downpayments and make further changes to mortgage insurance premiums. In testimony before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Economic Opportunity this week, officials of the mortgage banking and housing industries supported efforts to reform the FHA, Ginnie Mae and the Rural Housing Service to restore stability and strength to the housing sector. But such reforms should strike the proper balance between prudent risk management and providing credit assistance to qualified borrowers, they said. The hearing was called...

A new survey from ING DIRECT has found that 56 percent of homebuyers do not use the Good Faith Estimate as it was intended - to shop around and compare mortgage offers to get the best possible deal...

Industry attorneys are warning FHA lenders and other users of federal funding to carefully screen loans they originate, or risk a government lawsuit for violation of the False Claims Act. First enacted during the Civil War against government contractors gouging the Union Army, the FCA has expanded beyond defense contractors and health care providers and is now being used aggressively to challenge improper FHA lending practices, according to panelists on a recent webinar hosted by the Washington law firm BuckleySandler. With government insurance increasingly on the hook, federal enforcement along the lines of the recent Department of Justice lawsuit against ...

Accounting for the FHAs single-family mortgage insurance program using the current methodology spelled out in the Federal Credit Reform Act or an alternative fair value approach will yield opposing results that could mean "savings" or potentially significant losses for the government and taxpayers, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In a recent study, the CBO estimated that, using the FCRA methodology, the FHA program would produce budgetary savings of $4.4 billion in fiscal year 2012. In contrast, a fair-value approach would result in ...

FHA endorsements fell 22.1 percent from the fourth quarter as the refinancing wave of 2010 ended, as did production in other channels in the first quarter of 2011. The FHA endorsed $57.6 billion in 1-4 family mortgage loans in the first quarter, including reverse mortgages, down from $74.0 billion the previous quarter. It lost some market share to VA, whose total originations were up 26.2 percent from the first quarter of last year. The agency reported a 33.8 percent increase in applications in March ... [includes one data chart and one graph]

Consumer advocates called on Congress to extend national mortgage servicing standards to all servicers, including those of government-insured home loans. Testifying before the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development recently, Diane Thompson, of counsel to the National Consumer Law Center, said loans made by the FHA, the VA and the Rural Housing Services are generally aimed at ...

FHA loans in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware performed better in 2008 and in 2009 than in 2006 and 2007 as credit quality became stronger, according to a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The findings should allay concerns of policymakers in Washington, DC, that FHA defaults have risen during the housing crisis and may put the federal mortgage insurance fund in peril, the study said. Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, one of the data sources used by Fed analysts, indicate that overall lending patterns in the Third District states have ...

Effective July 1, reporting of tax information to investors of Ginnie Mae securities will move from e-Access to the Ginnie Mae Enterprise-Wide Portal (GMEP), which now serves as the single access point for all of the agency's online business applications. The e-Access function for uploading quarterly widely held fixed investment trust (WHFIT) reporting files for investors would no longer ...

High-touch servicer Nationstar Mortgage announced this week that it plans to raise up to $400.0 million via an initial public offering. The servicer - owned by Fortress Investment Group - primarily focuses on defaulted agency mortgages. Nationstar serviced a $64.2 billion portfolio as of the end of 2010, with subprime mortgages accounting for a 14.6 percent share. Reps. Gary Miller, R-CA and Brad Sherman, D-CA, recently introduced legislation to permanently increase the conforming loan limits. Few analysts believe that H.R. 1754, "the Preserving Equal Access to Mortgage Finance Programs Act," will gain much traction considering...