Smaller issuers of Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities will find it easier to pledge mortgage servicing rights (MSRs) to obtain warehouse financing and better compete with their larger rivals, thanks to changes announced recently by Ginnie Mae. Changes to the Acknowledgment Agreement will make it simpler for Ginnie Mae to honor servicing pledges and allow the transfer of related servicing rights. They also clarify and limit the conditions under which Ginnie Mae can deny an issuers request to transfer servicing to the issuers creditor. Under the previous 2007 procedures, an issuer seeking Ginnie Maes approval to pledge its rights to servicing income as a security for a loan from a private lender must ...
President Obama has announced Carol Galante as his pick for Assistant Secretary for Housing and FHA Commissioner at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Galante has occupied the two posts in an acting capacity since July 12, when she replaced Robert Ryan. Ryan temporarily assumed both jobs after former HUD Assistant Secretary for Housing and FHA Commissioner David Stevens left HUD at the end of March 2011 to join the Mortgage Bankers Association as its new president and CEO. Prior to her current post, Galante served as HUD deputy assistant secretary for multifamily programs. In addition, Galante, a licensed real estate broker, has been a leader of major administration initiatives, including ...
The Senate voted this week to reinstate the higher conforming loan limit that expired at the end of September, heeding calls by the real estate and mortgage industries. On a vote of 60-38, lawmakers passed an amendment to the FY2012 funding bill, S. 1596, for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which, among other things, would raise the maximum loan amount that can be guaranteed by FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, the amendment restores the 125 percent median home price formula used to calculate the temporary higher loan limits in effect prior to Oct. 1, which was up to $729,750 in certain high-cost areas of the country and lower in other jurisdictions. After Oct. 1, the new loan limit calculation was ...
The departure of MetLife Bank, a division of insurer MetLife Inc., from the mortgage business will leave a gap in the FHA market that should not be hard to fill. The bank recently announced its intention to sell its mortgage business due to uncertainty in the marketplace and the rising cost of compliance in an excessively burdensome regulatory environment. It is getting too difficult to compete and be profitable under these conditions, the bank said in a statement. MetLife Banks mortgage-related woes reflected on its FHA origination volume and market share, both of which have been shrinking over the last couple of quarters. MetLife ranked fourth among ...
Endorsements of Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans during the first six months of 2011 rose 0.4 percent above the rate of endorsements from a year earlier but fell 20.2 percent on a quarterly basis, according to Inside FHA Lendings analysis of HECM activity during the first six months of 2011. At the mid-year mark, HECM endorsements totaled $9.5 billion, with third-party originators sponsored by FHA-approved lenders accounting for 40.4 percent of all HECM originations. Non-FHA-approved mortgage brokers are no longer allowed to originate HECMs under a policy change last year aimed at reducing FHA losses and risks to the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. HECM endorsements totaled ... [includes two (2) data charts]
A whos who list of a number of the largest and most well-known mortgage lenders in the country including Wells Fargo, Countrywide Home Loans, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, GMAC Mortgage Corp., Citimortgage and Suntrust Mortgage have been accused by two whistle-blower types of charging U.S. military veterans illegal fees to refinance their home mortgages. According to the accusations, made in a complaint unsealed in federal court in Atlanta late last week, the mortgage lending entities charged refinance fees that are prohibited by the Department of Veterans Affairs and hid the charges by padding or inflating other allowable charges so they could obtain government guarantees for the mortgages, all without telling the veterans.
High-quality endorsements and lower-than-expected prepayment speeds have given a slight boost to the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund in the second quarter of 2011 even as agency officials remained cautiously optimistic about the recent book of business. In its quarterly report, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said that the MMI funds total capital improved by $100 million to $31.7 billion from the previous quarter as revenues from premiums and property sales exceeded higher claims payments. Endorsements in the second quarter alone added $1.7 billion to the capital reserve account, which stood at $2.8 billion at the end of June, the report noted. The FHA capital reserve account, which absorbs ...
Ginnie Mae is following its own path in exploring potential changes to servicer compensation, a project that parallels the Federal Housing Finance Agencys Joint Initiative on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac servicing compensation. As part of the FHAs effort to improve default servicing, Ginnie Mae and other government housing agencies will be working separately to develop better claims mechanisms and pooling services as well as clearer risk and warranty delineations to improve the value of securitizations, the FHFA said. In a discussion paper, the FHFA, which oversees Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, said ...
A proposed FHA rule on seller concessions recently listed as withdrawn from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs review process is now being cleared for issuance by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. FHA spokesman Lemar Wooley clarified that the long-awaited proposal was not withdrawn as reported but delayed as a routine requirement for an Economic Impact analysis. But now it is moving again, he explained in an email. It is in the clearance process and we hope to publish a proposed rule before the end of the year. According to Wooley, the proposed rule would ...
The FHA is seeking legal opinion on whether Congress can grant it authority to bar any former executive of a defunct lender from participating in FHA programs for material violation of agency requirements. The Department of Housing and Urban Developments Office of General Counsel is pondering the question in the wake of an internal report on the FHAs inability to prevent former executives of defunct mortgage companies that failed to indemnify HUD on FHA losses from reentering the FHA program. The report from HUDs Inspector General said 12 corporate officers have signed on to new mortgage firms with ...