Tennessee Lender Agrees to $70 million Settlement to Resolve Alleged FHA Violations. Franklin American Mortgage of Franklin, TN, has agreed to pay the federal government $70 million to resolve allegations of failing to comply with FHA requirements. Specifically, the direct endorsement lender allegedly engaged in improper underwriting of FHA loans between Jan. 1, 2006, and Dec. 31, 2012, which later resulted in submission of claims and substantial losses to the FHA insurance fund. Franklin entered into a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Inspector General. As part of the settlement, Franklin acknowledged “it engaged in certain conduct in connection with its origination, underwriting, and quality control of certain single-family residential mortgage loans insured by FHA.” The settlement was neither an admission of ...
Candidate Clinton noted: “But when community banks and credit unions offer mortgages, they’re looking to invest in their neighborhoods and communities to help them grow and prosper…”
Lone Star Funds is preparing to issue a $216.97 million MBS backed by newly originated nonprime mortgages, according to presale reports published this week. The deal will help the market for new nonprime MBS outpace issuance of jumbo MBS, at least momentarily. Last month, Deephaven Mortgage issued a $154.33 million MBS backed by new nonprime mortgages and Angel Oak Capital Advisors issued a $132.65 million MBS, neither of which received credit ratings. Lone Star’s COLT 2016-2 is scheduled to close next week. Two jumbo MBS were issued...
The National Credit Union Administration gets another chance to recover MBS losses incurred by a now-defunct federal credit union, while The Royal Bank of Scotland and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance announce a confidential settlement agreement to resolve the latter’s MBS claims. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has vacated a 2015 order by the Central District of California dismissing NCUA’s claims on behalf of failed Western Corporate FCU, which the agency placed in conservatorship in March 2009 and later in liquidation. The agency is acting as liquidating agent for Wescorp against Nomura Home Equity Loan, Inc. The NCUA filed...
Meanwhile, one mortgage executive told us that earlier in the year Impac approached his shop about a sale. This executive, who did not want his company identified, turned Impac down…
Wells Fargo was hit with fines totaling $185.0 million this week for secretly opening unauthorized accounts for customers at the bank. Regulators said the bank’s incentives for cross-selling financial products pushed employees at Wells to open unwanted deposit and credit card accounts for customers of the bank. The fines were imposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ($100.0 million, the largest penalty ever imposed by the CFPB), the city and county of Los Angeles ...
Ginnie Mae issued $46.5 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities in August, up slightly from July, according to an analysis of Ginnie data. Single-family MBS monthly issuance in August was the highest monthly volume so far this year. Total issuance also was up 12.3 percent from the same month last year., Strong purchase and refinance originations in the second quarter helped push production in the third quarter. Although purchase loans with private mortgage insurance outpaced gains in FHA and VA loans in the second quarter, deliveries to Ginnie so far appear to indicate a strong third quarter. Meanwhile, VA volume has been fueled largely by refinance activity over the past few years and does not appear to be letting up. PennyMac and Freedom Mortgage battled for first place with $4.35 billion and $4.34 billion, respectively, in MBS issuance in August. Despite cutting back on its ... [1 chart]
A California FHA lender could face monetary penalties totaling $242,828 for deficient mortgage underwriting and exposing the FHA insurance fund to increased risk of loss and fraud. A Department of Housing and Urban Development inspector general’s audit of Sun West Mortgage Co. of Cerritos, CA, also alleged unauthorized use of foreign staff in another country to “pre-underwrite” FHA loans. The audit was triggered by a complaint the IG Office received in November last year alleging that Sun West, an approved FHA lender since 1980, was not underwriting FHA loans properly. In addition, the complaint alleged that Sun West was having the loans pre-underwritten by a company in another country, in violation of HUD rules. Neither the company nor the country was identified in the audit report. The complaint further alleged that employees at Sun West shared user identification numbers for ...
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