After months of investor uncertainty and occasional hand-wringing, it has begun – the “tapering,” that is. This week, the Federal Reserve announced that it would scale back the growth in its agency MBS portfolio from $40 billion a month to $35 billion a month, starting in January. The central bank said it would continue to reinvest principal payments from its huge agency MBS portfolio, which was up to $1.483 trillion at the last official reading. With new production in the agency MBS market falling dramatically since April, the Fed’s target...
In just a few weeks, it will become clear whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay rule will be the industry’s Y2K moment. But in the meantime, three top industry attorneys shared some final advice and guidance during a QM “double check” webinar sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance last week. Joseph Reilly, a partner at BuckleySandler LLP, emphasized the critical importance of lenders documenting their compliance with the new regulation. “If a tree falls...
After ending fiscal year 2012 at a negative $16.3 billion, the FHA’s mutual mortgage insurance fund is close to being in the black, according to an independent actuarial report released late last week. The FHA noted that it has shifted its focus from shoring up the MMIF to reducing lenders’ underwriting overlays and targeting poorly performing servicers. The net worth of the MMIF at the end of fiscal year 2013 was negative $1.3 billion, according to the report, due to pricing and policy changes by the Department of Housing and Urban Development along with improvements to the economy. The capital reserve ratio for the MMIF also improved from negative 1.44 percent at the end of fiscal 2012 to negative 0.11 percent at the end of fiscal 2013. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan noted...
The U.S. Treasury’s new Federal Insurance Office released a long-awaited report last week that calls for the federal oversight of mortgage insurers, an industry now overseen directly by state insurance regulators and indirectly by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. “Federal standards and oversight for mortgage insurers should be developed and implemented,” said the report. The private mortgage insurance sector is interconnected...
Home-equity lending has quietly begun to rebound in 2013 as firmer house prices give homeowners more to borrow against and rising mortgage rates diminish the appeal of refinancing. According to revised Inside Mortgage Finance estimates, a total of $43.5 billion of home-equity lines of credit and closed-end second mortgages were originated during the first nine months of this year. That was up 30.8 percent from the same period in 2012 and it included a hefty 13.3 percent increase from the second to the third quarter of this year. The increase in HEL production so far hasn’t turned...[Includes three data charts]
Limited examination resources and staff turnover at the Federal Housing Finance Agency remain a concern, according to the FHFA's Office of Inspector General.
FHA officials first asked for the servicing authority back in June, but the request has gone nowhere. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already have transfer authority.
A BuckleySandler lawyer reached into Zen lore to make his point. “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” he asked. Similarly, “Starting in 2014: If a lender complies with ATR/QM but cannot evidence it, has the lender complied?”
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