Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, has asked the Department of Housing and Urban Development to explain the duties and functions of two officials who were appointed as “principal deputy assistant secretary.” The appointments make it appear that HUD is deliberately circumventing the nomination process by creating new official titles for appointees without obtaining Senate confirmation, said Grassley. If that is the case, HUD Secretary Julian Castro may be in violation of the Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, the lawmaker warned. The statute provides several mechanisms to fill job positions that require candidates to be nominated by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. “The Vacancies Act also declares that those mechanisms are the exclusive means of filling vacancies,” Grassley said. “Creating new job titles is not ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs has found a defect in “transfer of custody” (TOC) processing, wherein TOC reports are being rejected when submitted to the agency. The reports are not being accepted apparently because servicers are not filling out the “Date of Confirmation/Ratification of Sale” fields, the agency said. Servicers have 15 days after loan termination to report if they want to transfer custody of a foreclosed property to the VA. Loan termination for a foreclosure and loan termination for a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure are defined separately under VA rules. The VA said the defect will be fixed once the agency’s VALERI (VA Loan Electronic Reporting Interface) Manifest 3.4 is released in June. VALERI 3.4 comes in the wake of VALERI 3.3, which the VA deployed on April 11, 2015. The updated version included a revised description of a ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is requiring servicers of FHA-insured mortgages to delay foreclosure for a year and to evaluate all borrowers for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and other similar loss-mitigation programs. The move is one of the improvements to the FHA Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, a direct-sale pilot program that allows pools of foreclosure-bound mortgages to be sold to qualified bidders. Bidders are encouraged to work with borrowers to help cure the loan – a less costly alternative to foreclosure or an REO (real estate-owned) sale. An FHA servicer can place a troubled loan into a DASP pool if the borrower is at least six months delinquent on their mortgage and the servicer has exhausted all FHA loss-mitigation options. Previously, servicers could foreclose six months after they received the loan. They were also encouraged, though not required, to ...

The FHA has automated the delivery of notices to targeted lenders that receive an “unacceptable” rating following a post-endorsement review of a sample of their FHA-insured mortgage loans. The agency’s notification process shifted from manual to electronic effective on April 27, with the deployment of a new automated system for delivering notices of unacceptable findings, or eFindings letter. The change speeds up the process of determining whether a direct-endorsement lender should be subject to an indemnification request from FHA because of faulty underwriting. The enhanced delivery process will make it easier for lenders to do business with the FHA, the agency said. The post-endorsement audit is crucial to the success of the FHA’s direct-endorsement program. The FHA performs a post-endorsement technical review (PETR) on selected cases to evaluate the risk loans pose to ...

Recent actions by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government-sponsored enterprises and FHA to make it easier for borrowers to get a mortgage are probably going to be an inconsequential wash overall, according to a panel of industry representatives and policy experts. However, there was some optimism expressed as well. Commenting on last week’s changes from the FHFA on GSE guaranty fees and loan-level price adjustments, Ron Haynie, senior vice president of ...

First Horizon National Corp. has announced an agreement in principle with the federal government to settle potential claims related to the underwriting and origination of FHA-insured mortgages during the run-up to the financial crisis. Disclosed in a regulatory filing, the agreement between First Tennessee Bank and the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development covers FHA loans originated from 2006 through 2008, which have gone to claim ...

A recent $36 million settlement agreement between Golden First Mortgage Corp. and the federal government is raising questions about the lender’s ability to pay. The Department of Justice apparently has a plan to collect from a company that is no longer in business and hardly generated enough revenue to pay the full settlement amount. Whatever that plan is, the agency is not disclosing it. Based in upstate New York, Golden First agreed to pay up to resolve allegations that it ...

First-time homebuyers and specialized loan products helped propel Navy Federal Credit Union’s mortgage originations over the $1 billion mark in March, the best month in the credit union’s 82-year history. Year-to-date, Navy Federal has made more than $2.5 billion in mortgages to members, which now include active-duty, retired and reserve personnel of all the armed services, as well as Department of Defense civilian employees and defense contractors. In March 2013, Navy Federal expanded its ...

The FHA is looking at non-traditional factors in credit scoring that might be considered in determining a borrower’s creditworthiness. In remarks during a credit-access symposium co-hosted by the National Association of Realtors and other industry groups, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro said the FHA is looking at various alternative credit-scoring models that might help increase homeownership opportunities for more people ...

The reverse mortgage lending industry is asking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to clarify that reverse mortgages are excluded from proposed changes to mortgage servicing rules relating to “successors in interest.” In a comment letter, the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association warned that requiring lenders to determine which parties meet a new regulatory definition of “successor in interest” could expose lenders to numerous, costly risks. The requirement would ...