FHA to Extend Short Refi Program. The FHA has announced its intent to extend its Short Refinance Program for borrowers in negative equity positions. A mortgagee letter will be issued soon to announce the extension. Feedback Period extended for Draft Servicing Section of Proposed Single Family Handbook. The FHA is extending the comment period for the draft servicing section of the Single Family Housing Policy Handbook through Nov. 14, 2014 to allow stakeholders additional time to study and comment on the proposed section. The original deadline date was Oct. 17. CFPB Updates Reverse Mortgage Guide. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently updated its reverse mortgage guide on its website to account for recent changes made by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to its Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program. The updated guide highlights new limits to ...
MountainView, a firm known mostly for the market it makes in mortgage servicing rights, is branching out into non-QM lending, but company officials cautioned that its effort will start small. Moreover, a spokesman for the firm clarified that loans acquired through its new “Peak Program” will meet the ability-to-repay rule requirements, including the non-QM loans. “We expect...
Shareholders are appealing a federal judge’s decision last week to toss out their legal challenge to the federal government’s siphoning off of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits, and a legal expert says they could be helped out by what comes out in discovery in other investor lawsuits. Speaking during a conference call sponsored by Investors Unite, New York School of Law Professor Richard Epstein – who does not own stock in the government-sponsored enterprises – blasted the “misguided” ruling by Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He characterized it as an overly generous interpretation of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 in favor of the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. “Although the government claimed to be looking out for the shareholders, it ended up...
The Mortgage Bankers Association is on a mission to convince banking regulators to revisit the Basel III capital standards and to change the cap on how much mortgage servicing rights can count toward Tier I capital. The way things stand now, MSRs will be capped at 10 percent of capital when the rule is fully phased in, with the excess deducted from a depository’s “common equity.” Previously, the cap was 100 percent. In a draft letter to the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the MBA argues...
The U.S. Supreme Court gets another crack at deciding whether plaintiffs can bring a disparate-impact lawsuit under the Fair Housing Act (and by extension, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act), a question that has divided courts, lenders and consumer advocacy groups for years. The court’s partial grant of the petition in the Texas case would be its third opportunity in two years to rule on the controversial question. Two prior cases raising that issue, Township of Mount Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizen Action, Inc. and Magner v. Gallagher, were both settled before oral argument could be presented before the court. SCOTUS has agreed...
Mortgage underwriting standards are relaxing somewhat, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance, particularly as production has shifted from a focus on refinances to purchase mortgages. However, underwriting standards are much more stringent than they were before the financial crisis, with few options available for nonprime borrowers. The average credit score on purchase mortgages included...
Another refi boomlet? One Long Island-based mortgage executive told us this: “Locks doubled from the day before and are up 30 percent over the previous 10 days”…
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