Legislation was introduced this week to repeal the FHA’s life-of-loan requirement and reinstate a previous policy of requiring borrowers to pay premiums until the outstanding principal balance reaches 78 percent of the original home value. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced the Making FHA More Affordable Act so that families would not have to keep paying mortgage insurance premiums for the life of their FHA-insured loan. Up until June 3, 2013, FHA was aligned with the private mortgage insurance industry in charging premiums only until the outstanding principal balance reached 78 percent of the original home value. The FHA first announced its intention to require life-of-loan premium payments in January 2013, allowing the agency to collect more premium revenue to bolster its ailing Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. FHA’s life-of-loan policy ...

Brian Montgomery, President Trump’s nominee for FHA commissioner, expressed concern that federal housing regulators may have been adversarial in their treatment of mortgage lenders in their effort to stem losses and protect the FHA insurance fund. Testifying during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs this week, Montgomery said regulators must do better providing clarity to lenders. “It’s time we treat [lenders] more like ...

Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is getting good reviews from mortgage industry participants regarding his congressional testimony late last week on program reforms, particularly his strategy for dealing with FHA exposure under the False Claims Act. Industry observers noted an improvement in Carson’s knowledge and understanding of HUD programs since taking office in March. His nomination by President Trump was controversial because ...

The securities industry is backing Ginnie Mae’s stepped-up efforts to curb loan churning and rapid refinancing of VA loans and expressed its concern over how such improper lending practices might affect borrowers and MBS investors. In a letter this week to Michael Bright, Ginnie’s chief operating officer and acting president, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association lauded the agency’s investigation of aggressive refinancing of VA loans. The practice has ...

Ginnie Mae issuers rode a wave of purchase-mortgage lending to deliver $120.46 billion of forward mortgages during the third quarter of 2017, the highest three-month volume for the year, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. Third-quarter volume was up 9.6 percent from the April-June cycle. The data excluded FHA reverse mortgages and loan amounts are truncated in Ginnie’s mortgage-backed securities disclosures. Without those limitations, total Ginnie MBS issuance rose 9.5 percent to $123.37 billion in the third quarter. Purchase mortgages were the engine behind the growth. Ginnie issuers securitized $85.35 billion of purchase loans in the third quarter, falling just short of the record $85.41 billion set in the third quarter of last year. Although most Ginnie purchase loans (58.7 percent) were FHA loans, the biggest increase was in such loans guaranteed by the ... [Charts]

Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson indicated he is open to the idea of moving the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program out of the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund to stem future losses. Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee this week, Carson said the changes the department has made recently, as well as those currently under consideration, will eliminate most of the program’s problems although residual issues may still linger. Carson acknowledged that the HECM program’s default rate has been a drain on the MMI Fund even though it is much smaller than the FHA’s forward loan portfolio. The recently revised HECM rules issued on Sept. 19 have “stopped the bleeding” in terms of new reverse mortgages, he added. However, separating the HECM portfolio from the FHA insurance fund and making it a stand-alone program is ...

Ginnie Mae and the VA this week officially announced a joint-agency task force to deal with the loan-churning problem that is triggering faster prepayments in Ginnie mortgage-backed securities pools. Specifically, the task force will scrutinize aggressive and misleading refinancing offers and address loan churning and repeated refinancings. It will also examine critical issues, data and lender behaviors related to refinancing loans, as well as determine the kind of policy and program changes agencies should make to ensure VA refi loans do not pose an undue risk or burden to vets and taxpayers. Both the VA and Ginnie Mae programs work best when market participants use them to provide a benefit to VA borrowers and, ultimately, lower vet’s costs, officials said. The task force has begun examining data and information to ensure refi loans provide net tangible benefits to veteran-borrowers. In addition, the ...

An estimated 9.8 percent of Ginnie Mae’s business may be potentially at risk due to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, according to data released recently by the agency. The data represent the number of Ginnie loans and their unpaid principal balance amounts in presidentially declared disaster areas in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A total of 1.07 million mortgage loans with an unpaid principal balance of $184.5 billion have been affected. Ginnie Mae’s current mortgage-backed securities portfolio totals $1.9 trillion. The data only refer to the geographic locations of all affected properties underlying loans in Ginnie MBS pools and do not indicate the percentage of those that may have sustained damage during a storm. Hurricane Irma had the highest share of affected loans, 6 percent, while Harvey and Maria accounted for 3 percent and 1 percent, respectively. Irma caused the ...

The FHA has updated its guidelines for Home Equity Conversion Mortgage for Purchase (H4P) loans to allow lenders to accept loan applications from borrowers without requiring a certificate of occupancy, as well as prior to completion of HECM counseling. The change follows the Sept. 19 effective date of the HECM final rule, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development released earlier this year. The final rule codifies the many policies that are now in place for originating and servicing reverse mortgages, including H4P requirements. According to the revised guideline, an FHA lender may take an initial HECM loan application either prior to or after the completion of HECM counseling. Also, previously, H4P properties were eligible for FHA insurance only when construction was completed and when the local jurisdiction issued a certificate of occupancy or its equivalent, confirming the ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is discontinuing its quarterly newsletter, Lender Insight, with the implementation of FHA’s Loan Review System. The change is aimed at improving both FHA’s and lenders’ quality-control and risk-management operations. HUD will be publishing a quarterly Loan Review Summary Report to provide a snapshot of the results of FHA’s quality-control review of mortgage originations over the preceding 12 months. According to HUD, the report will include only underwritten loans that were subject to a post-endorsement technical review. It does not include the results of lenders’ self-reports or any other loans that were reviewed as part of a lender examination, the agency said. The report will show the initial rating of all loans, the updated rating six months from the end of the review period, and a final rating. The “final” rating is subject to change as long as ...