The Trump administration has proposed deep budget cuts in 2018 for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but whether the agencies’ critical housing insurance programs would be affected is unclear. The cuts are part of the administration’s plan to reduce non-defense discretionary spending dramatically in order to fund increased defense spending and President Trump’s southern border wall, and to bring down a projected $9.4 trillion U.S. deficit over the next decade.Released this week, the preliminary 2018 budget seeks $40.7 billion in gross discretionary funding for HUD, $6.2 billion or 13.2 percent lower than the department’s approved spending in 2017. The $47.3 billion in discretionary budget authority enacted for fiscal 2017 does not include offsetting receipts from FHA and Ginnie Mae, which lowered the congressionally appropriated cost for ...
Security National Mortgage Co. of Salt Lake City has paid $4.25 million to the Department of Housing and Urban Development to settle allegations of failing to comply with FHA loan requirements. Security National, a retail lender, has been an FHA-approved direct endorsement lender since October 1993, the year it was founded. The settlement resolves a joint civil investigation by the HUD Office of the Inspector General, Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey into Security National’s FHA origination and underwriting practices in connection with 100 FHA-insured loans. As part of the settlement, the lender “agreed it engaged in certain conduct in connection with its origination and underwriting of the loans.” The HUD OIG provided no details about the investigation. The OIG said the loans that were certified as compliant would not have been insured had ...
PHH Corp. and related parties again made a full defense of their position in their legal struggle with the CFPB over alleged misconduct under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.
The volume of home mortgages outstanding continued to grow during the final three months of 2016, no thanks to the commercial banking industry. Recently released data from the Federal Reserve show $10.266 trillion of mortgage debt outstanding at the end of last year. That was up 0.7 percent for the quarter and reflected a 2.3 percent gain for the full year. The market still has a long way to go to catch up to the $11.240 trillion of mortgage debt outstanding at the end of 2007, but growth has been steady since bottoming out in mid-2014. The agency market continued...[Includes two data tables]
A recent decision by a federal judge in Detroit dismissing portions of the Department of Justice’s FHA-related claims against Quicken Loans will shrink the lender’s liability under the False Claims Act, according to a legal expert. In a decision rendered March 9 on the closely watched case, U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith narrowed the scope and timeframe for which the DOJ can pursue any recovery or settlement against Quicken Loans for FHA losses allegedly due to faulty underwriting and loan default performance. It is the first major decision since the DOJ’s suit was transferred from federal court in Washington, DC, to federal court in Detroit last year. The DOJ and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General began...
The three major credit bureaus plan to exclude two critical pieces of negative information from their reports, which may make it easier for some borrowers to qualify for a mortgage. Many tax liens and civil judgments, which can weigh down a credit score, will be removed. As part of a multi-year plan to alleviate incorrect information, on July 1, Equifax, Experian and Transunion will apply new public record standards when it comes to collecting and the timely updating of civil judgments and tax liens, the Consumer Data Industry Association said this week. The new standard will apply...
Nearly all of the discussion related to the ongoing legal battle between PHH Corp. and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has involved either questions about the bureau’s interpretation and enforcement of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act or issues having to do with the constitutionality of the CFPB. But the role played by the administrative law judge early in the bureau’s enforcement action has surfaced, with potential significance in the eyes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which recently granted the agency’s request for a rehearing by the full court. To adjudicate the matter early on, the CFPB borrowed...
A borrower seeking cancellation of private mortgage insurance prevailed last week in a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase. The appeals court noted that federal law regarding standards for MI cancellation overrides Fannie Mae’s servicing guidelines. The case of Ginnine Fried v. JPMorgan Chase centers on how to calculate a borrower’s loan-to-value ratio when allowing for MI cancellation after the LTV ratio falls below 80.0 percent. The borrower filed...
A request from two consumers for changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act would interfere with mortgage origination and servicing operations, according to the Consumer Mortgage Coalition. The CMC submitted a comment letter to the Federal Communications Commission late last week in response to a petition submitted to the FCC in January. The petition called for the FCC to re-write parts of the TCPA and require express consent to be in writing from consumers regarding certain communications from companies, including mortgage lenders and servicers. The petition would define express consent as not being provided even when a person to be called knowingly provides a phone number to a lender on a loan application. Anne Canfield, executive director of the CMC, said...
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