The Financial Services Roundtable called for changes to FHA’s legal liability standards to encourage banks to make more FHA loans. Increased risks of False Claims Act enforcement and concerns about multi-million dollar penalties even for the slightest underwriting errors have forced banks to restrict their FHA lending. The top 10 FHA lenders, once dominated by banks, are now nondepository institutions, which accounted for 83 percent of FHA forward originations in the first quarter of 2017. Wells Fargo, once the leader in FHA lending, has dropped to a woeful 20th place in the rankings. “Some federal officials have expressed concern about the capacity of the government to evaluate the qualifications of lenders that are not subject to regulation by federal agencies,” the FSR said. The group also noted the credit overlays many FHA lenders have added to the loans due to ...

False Claims Act enforcement against FHA lenders appears to have slowed with no new cases being filed by the Department of Justice or referred by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general for nearly a year. Neither agency has gone after any lender for alleged False Claims Act violations since May of last year when the Department of Justice intervened in an FCA case brought by a whistleblower against Guild Mortgage, an FHA direct endorsement lender. The complaint alleged that San Diego-based Guild Mortgage knowingly approved loans that violated FHA rules while falsely certifying compliance with those rules. The alleged violations occurred between 2006 and 2011, resulting in “tens of millions of dollars” in losses to HUD. The case is pending in federal district court in Washington, DC. Indications are the FCA cases involving FHA lenders have ...

Loan processing for incompetent veterans presents significant challenges to VA lenders, requiring strict compliance with special guidance on top of the basic VA underwriting rules. One challenge is dealing with legal appointees who assist and represent veterans in legal transactions, such as applying for a mortgage loan. There are ways to determine whether a veteran is incompetent, said Mark Jamison, loan production officer (LPO) with the VA Cleveland Regional Center, during the VA Lender Conference in Kansas City, MO, last month. The Department of Veterans Affairs or a probate court can deem a veteran incompetent due to severe injury, medical conditions, mental disorders, and financial instability, he said. A mortgage lender could make a determination of incompetency if the initial purchase contract documents were signed by an attorney-in-fact, the veteran divulged the incompetency, or the ...

Moody’s Rates Credit Suisse FHA Securitization Transaction. Moody’s assigned investment-grade ratings to Credit Suisse’s first securitization deal in 2017 backed by seasoned re-performing and performing, fully amortizing, fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages insured by FHA. The deal is the first FHA-insured re-performing transaction since 2010, according to the rating agency. The collateral pool is comprised of 672 first-lien, fixed-rate loans and ARMs with a weighted average updated FICO score of 614 and loan-to-value ratio of 94.2 percent. Approximately 82.4 percent of the loans in the collateral pool were previously modified. Approximately 52.8 percent of the loans have been current for at least 24 months. Another 17.3 percent of the loans have been current for more than 12 months. Comments Sought on Various Information Collection Proposals. The Department of Housing and ...

Financial Freedom, an Austin, TX-based servicer, agreed to an $89 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, and FHA servicing requirements in connection with its participation in FHA’s Home Equity Conversion Mortgages, or “reverse mortgage,” program. The Justice Department alleged that Financial Freedom sought to obtain insurance payments for interest from FHA “despite failing to properly disclose on the insurance claim forms it filed with the agency that the mortgagee was not eligible for such interest payments because it had failed to meet various deadlines relating to appraisal of the property, submission of claims to the Department of Housing and Urban ...

Nonbank lenders far out-produced depository institutions in originating FHA mortgages during the first quarter of 2017. A new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis reveals that nonbank lenders produced over 83 percent of FHA forward loans endorsed during the first quarter. With over 8,000 entities listed as originators and sponsors in FHA loan-level data, the overwhelming majority of them were independent mortgage banks, mortgage brokers and other nonbank lenders. The 14 largest FHA originators were all nonbanks, led by Quicken Loans, Freedom Mortgage and loanDepot. One sign of the overwhelming fragmentation in the FHA primary market is the fact that these three lenders accounted for just 11.3 percent of first-quarter endorsements. The largest depository originator of FHA loans was PrimeLending, an affiliate of PlainsCapital Bank. It ranked 15th in production with a ... [charts ]

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ interim final rule on qualified mortgages (QM) implements the Dodd-Frank provision requiring creditors to make a reasonable and good faith determination that the borrower has a reasonable ability to repay the loan. The VA interim final rule defines QM to mean any loan that the agency guarantees, insures or originates. However, certain limitations apply to VA’s Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loans (IRRRLs) in the rule’s guidance for “safe harbor.” Under the safe harbor requirements for an IRRRL, the loan being refinanced must have been originated at least six months before the new loan’s closing, and six payments must have been made. In addition, the veteran should not have been more than 30 days past due during the six months preceding the new loan’s closing. The QM rule’s six-month seasoning requirement, however, inadvertently created an ...

Appropriation levels for FHA and Ginnie Mae from the previous fiscal year were unchanged in the FY 2017 omnibus spending bill, which President Trump signed into law on May 5. The bill, which passed the House by a 309-118 vote and the Senate by a 79-18 vote on May 4, will fund the federal government through the rest of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2017. Among other things, the bill allocates $400 billion to single-family guarantee commitments under the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, and provides $130 million for administrative contract expenses. In addition, the budget provides an additional $30 million if guaranteed loan commitments exceed $200 billion. The agreement also sets aside up to $30 billion for FHA multifamily and specialized loan guarantees during FY 2017. A total of $55 million was set aside for housing counseling programs, $65.3 million for fair housing activities, and $4 million to ...

With only days to go before the implementation of its new Loan Review System, the FHA is encouraging lenders to take a few more steps to ensure smooth transition to the new system. The LRS will go live on May 15, 2017, as the new electronic platform for FHA’s Title II single-family, quality-control processes. Lenders will use the LRS to interact with FHA during post-endorsement loan reviews, direct endorsement authority test cases, lender monitoring reviews and lender self-reporting of fraud and other material findings. Findings will be communicated through the system’s defect taxonomy, which provides a streamlined method of identifying and capturing information about defects uncovered during individual loan reviews. In its latest guidance, the FHA instructs lenders to check access to FHA Connection for any potential glitches. All users access the LRS through FHA Connection via the ...

Private mortgage insurers were the largest providers of insurance coverage on purchase loans securitized by the three agencies in early 2017, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. Private MI coverage was attached to $40.08 billion of purchase mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the first quarter. That equaled 26.3 percent of total purchase business by the two government-sponsored enterprises and Ginnie Mae. The FHA provided...[Includes one data table]