The Department of Veterans Affairs is urging VA lenders, borrowers and other participants in its loan guaranty program to adopt recommended standards, equipment and activities to reduce water and energy usage and to ease the impact of natural disasters. The VA has recommended wind-hazard standards, resilient building and retrofitting standards, a water- and energy-saving program, and property-and-energy conservation strategies to help VA borrowers protect their homes against storms, flooding, earthquakes and other calamities. VA made clear it allows, but does not require, any of the recommended standards, strategies or equipment. The programs are strictly voluntary, it said. The agency noted the increasing incidence of extreme weather events, earthquakes and flooding, which makes planning and building in the most resilient and economically feasible ways all the ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs adopted without change its interim final rule increasing the maximum amount of civil fines it can assess on lenders and other offenders for violations of agency loan-guaranty rules and regulations. Under the interim final rule VA issued for comment back in June, maximum civil monetary penalties would increase from $10,000 to $21,563 for false loan-guaranty certifications. Civil fines for fraudulent claims or statements in any VA program would increase from $5,500 to $10,781. The VA published the interim final rule on June 22, 2016, to implement the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015 and to improve the effectiveness of civil fines and maintain their deterrent effect. The new penalty amounts became ...

Ginnie Mae FY 2016 Highlights. “So far, we’ve pretty much broken every record,” said a Ginnie Mae spokesperson. Total mortgage-backed securities issuance for FY 2016 was $490.3 billion, “an all-time high by a pretty wide margin,” according to the spokesperson. September MBS issuance was also at an all-time high: $54.8 billion. Ginnie Mae commitment authority for the fiscal year was $430.2 billion. Approximately 2.3 million mortgage loans worth $462 billion underlay Ginnie’s single-family MBS pools in FY 2016. Of this total, $278 billion (1.4 million loans) were purchase mortgages, and $184 billion (0.9 million loans) were refinances or modified loans. Of the purchase dollar volume, first-time homebuyers accounted for $200 billion (1.1 million loans). Of the $462 billion single-family MBS pools, FHA accounted for 57.1 percent ($264 billion), VA, 38.8 percent ($179 billion), and rural housing loans, 3.9 percent ($18 billion). New California Law Protects Spouses of HECM Borrowers from ‘Widow Foreclosure.’ On Sept. 29, 2016, California Gov. Jerry Brown, D, signed Senate Bill 1150 into law to protect widows, widowers and other heirs of mortgage borrowers from unnecessary foreclosures.

In its proposed rulemaking, the CFPB clearly indicated it was not going to re-open the substance of the rule and address what it considered policy issues…

In a letter to its shareholders, Fairholme called the GSEs “two of the best businesses ever owned by the funds.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s integrated disclosure rule has now been in effect for a full year, and industry officials hope the potholes and speedbumps in the TRID road will continue to smooth out. Former CFPB official Benjamin Olson, now a partner with the BuckleySandler law firm in Washington, DC, noted that the first year of the TRID rule has been eventful. “In its early stages, the TRID rule proved to be far more disruptive than many envisioned, largely because of extraordinarily high rates of real and perceived errors and pervasive uncertainty over the liability associated with those errors,” he told Inside Mortgage Finance. Over time, the mortgage industry has been...

Wells Fargo – no doubt – is taking it on the chin for its “account fabrication” scandal tied to credit cards and deposits, but so far the damage has yet to seep into its mortgage business in a major way, but reports suggest certain correspondents are balking at doing business with the megabank. Dave Akre, managing director of Five Oaks Investment Corp., said he knows some loan officers working for Wells correspondents who are no longer offering the megabank’s jumbo products “due to recent issues.” Those “issues,” he pointed out in an interview with Inside Mortgage Finance, involve...

In its thirst to expand further into financial services, IBM recently agreed to buy blue-chip advisory firm Promontory Financial Group, but there are two units that “Big Blue” won’t be getting: Promontory MortgagePath LLC and Promontory Interfinancial. According to industry officials, both units will continue to be owned (at least in part) by PFG founder Eugene Ludwig, the former Comptroller of the Currency who started the firm in 2001. Promontory Interfinancial is considered...

Many participants in the mortgage industry remain concerned that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau did not address additional cure provisions in its proposed rulemaking to clarify the integrated consumer disclosure known as TRID. Lenders would love to see the bureau respond to these concerns when it finalizes its so-called TRID 2.0 rule. But that might not happen without Congress getting involved. During a webinar last week sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, some attendees inquired...

Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data released last week show a somewhat more efficient mortgage market in 2015 as fewer loan applications were declined and more turned into originated loans. Lenders processed $2.576 trillion in mortgage applications filed in 2015, converting them into $1.651 trillion in purchase and refinance originations, a 32.9 percent increase from the previous year. Some 56.5 percent of loan apps turned into closed loans, up from 53.8 percent in 2014, and the overall denial rate fell 2.9 points to 20.1 percent. Most of last year’s origination surge came...[Includes one data table]