The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s top internal cop has criticized the department before a congressional panel for its poor oversight of FHA’s single-family programs, particularly in short sales and disposition of real estate-owned properties. Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, HUD Inspector General David Montoya said the department continues to face challenges in ensuring its single-family programs benefit eligible participants and are not paying improper claims. In a recent review of FHA’s preforeclosure sales program, the IG estimated that ...
Federal housing regulators and Congress may have relied on inaccurate and outdated data while keeping track of FHA loan defaults and identifying potential risk to the FHA insurance fund, according to a report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General. The HUD IG said it initiated an audit after observing delayed reporting of default information on loan histories. The OIG performed the audit between November 2012 and July 2013. HUD did not comment on the report.The department requires lenders to report monthly all loans that are 30 days past due. Prompt and accurate reporting provides ...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued a final rule aligning its streamlined reporting requirements for small lenders with those of federal banking regulators. HUD’s regulations currently require all supervised lenders and mortgagees, regardless of their asset size, to submit annual audited financial statements as a condition of FHA lender approval and recertification. Federal banking regulators, on the other hand, do not require their “small supervised lenders” to submit audited financial statements, but allow them to submit unaudited financial regulatory reports. Unaudited financial reports include a ...
Freddie Mac had been lending Fed Funds (overnight loans) to Lehman Brothers since 2005. Then, in 2008, the nature of those loans changed to longer term borrowings.
The mortgage and housing sectors know that lower loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are coming – but they would like to forestall the day of reckoning for as long as possible, especially in light of looming implementation deadlines tied to a slew of new rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Industry lobbyists close to the issue said the Federal Housing Finance Agency was expected to make an announcement by the month’s end on what exactly those loan limits might be. However, some sources said the FHFA was weighing heavily the fact that mortgage lenders are already crunching on technology and compliance upgrades tied to CFPB rules, in particular, the ability-to-repay measure. One official said...
Late last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized revisions to some of its 2013 mortgage rules slated to take effect in January – mostly mortgage servicing and loan originator compensation regulations – whether the industry is ready or not. The amendments and clarifications that the bureau proposed in June – and now finalized via a final rules on Sept. 13 – include a number of changes sought by various industry groups. There were no big surprises between June and September, but some overlooked details, one of which was the CFPB determining that seller-paid points can be excluded from the 3 percent points-and-fees test for qualified mortgages under its ability-to-repay rule. “Seller’s points...are excluded...
Mortgage lenders reported originating $2.01 trillion in home-purchase and refinance mortgages during 2012, a 43.7 percent increase from the prior year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data released this week. Because HMDA data typically capture a relatively small share of home-equity originations and some small lenders don’t report at all, the total originations number for last year was somewhat higher. Interestingly, the origination volume grew...[Includes one data chart]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s amended final rule on ability to repay and qualified mortgages may have justifiable reasons but it is very complicated and difficult to implement, and likely to have unintended consequences, according to industry attorneys. Notwithstanding recent amendments to address concerns raised by the mortgage industry, the rule continues to pose challenges to lenders and attorneys in various areas. There are problems in the rule’s content and requirements as well as in developing policies and procedures to support it and the software to implement it, attorneys said. “We’re talking...
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