Though the Department of Housing and Urban Development strongly highlighted the positive aspects of the FY 2015 actuarial report on the state of Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, it also downplayed the impact of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage portfolio on the latest projections. FHA’s volatile HECM portfolio has had an unpredictable impact on the MMI Fund – a drag in some years and a boost in others. According to the report, the actuarial value of HECM capital has swung dramatically over the last four years and stood at $6.8 billion in FY 2015, up from negative $1.2 billion in fiscal 2014. The 6.44 percent spike in HECM gains helped boost the MMI Fund’s capital reserve ratio to 2.07 percent, in excess of the minimum 2.0 percent capital requirement. Excluding HECMs, the FHA fund – and the forward portfolio – would be at 1.6 percent, below the 2.0 percent threshold. The ...

The FHA has issued temporary guidance for approving condominium projects for agency financing – a good first step, according to industry groups. Stakeholders have been waiting for a broader rewrite of the condominium rules for years, and they see the interim guidance as limited but positive. Announced on Nov. 13, the guidance is in place for a year while the FHA works on a more comprehensive rule that addresses all condominium lenders’ concerns. The temporary guidelines modify the requirements for condominium project recertification. It can cost up to $3,000 and, in some cases, take more than a year, to complete a condominium recertification project. The certification is good for only two years. Condo projects run afoul of FHA rules when the certification lapses, rendering the ...

New York financial regulators have barred VA lender New Day Financial from doing any more business in the state for allegedly cheating on state-required continuing-education courses and examinations. The New York Department of Financial Services slapped the Fulton, MD-based lender (also doing business as New Day USA) with a $1 million fine and ordered it to surrender its mortgage banker’s license. The department accused top New Day executives as well as current and former employees of perpetrating an elaborate cheating scheme whereby compliance staffers took the required education courses and exams on behalf of senior managers and loan officers. According to state regulators, the cheating happened on numerous occasions and involved at least 20 New Day loan originators. The MLOs shared screen-shots of questions included in the National Multistate Licensing System and Registry (NMLSR) exams and ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs has issued new guidance for submitting title documents to the VA when conveying a property in Florida. The servicing guidance addresses potential lien problems in relation to past due and unpaid homeowners association obligations. As part of conveying a property in the Sunshine State, documentation must be complete and in order so that VA can validate a clean title that will be acceptable to lenders, buyers, title companies and attorneys in the community where the property is located. Thus, property conveyance usually involves providing an owner’s title-insurance policy with no exclusions, other than for taxes that have not yet been billed but may be accrued against the property. Under Florida law, if an HOA is properly named in the foreclosure, a borrower or its assignees or successor-in-interest is only required to pay the lesser of either the ...

It may take Ginnie Mae a bit longer than expected to make all the accounting corrections necessary before the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general to render a clean opinion on the guarantor’s fiscal 2015 financial statement and its restated financials for FY 2014. In fact, Ginnie might have to make some significant long-term investments to address the IG’s accounting concerns, said Thomas Weakland, acting chief financial officer at Ginnie Mae. The agency may have to spend on new technology and infrastructure, and beef up its staff “spanning multiple years” to remediate all of the IG’s concerns, said Weakland. However, Weakland did not state a timeline for making all the necessary corrections and adjustments. Until the IG is fully satisfied with the restatement, it will continue to withhold an audit opinion. “We recognized some of the efforts made and the constraints that ...

Menendez Introduces HAWK Amendment in T-HUD Appropriations Bill. The National Association of Realtors recently sent a thank-you note to Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, for introducing an amendment to H.R. 2577, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2016, to restore HUD’s authority to offer the Homeowners Armed with Knowledge (HAWK) program. Lawmakers who were concerned about the financial condition of the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund denied funding for the HAWK program last year in a continuing spending bill, effectively stalling the program for a year. The HAWK program is a key component of the FHA’s Blueprint for Access, which was designed to open up the credit box for underserved borrowers. Specifically, program participants will benefit from reductions in FHA premiums once they complete ...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency filed a motion last week to dismiss a lawsuit that was filed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders in Delaware this summer who argued that the Treasury sweep of the government-sponsored enterprises’ profits is illegal under state law. The complaint stated that with Fannie chartered under Delaware law and Freddie under Virginia’s jurisdiction, the preferred stock of a corporation cannot be given a cumulative dividend right equal to all the ...

Servicers’ use of property-management contractors has helped save costs and increase efficiencies but also opened servicers to liability, according to an analysis of litigation involving contractors. Christopher Odinet, an assistant professor of law at the Southern University Law Center, noted that servicers’ reliance on property-management firms increased in recent years due to long timelines for delinquencies and foreclosures. Servicers hire the firms to inspect ...

With the CFPB’s legal action against PHH Corp. pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, a number of experts are revisiting the bureau’s enforcement actions related to marketing services agreements for clues as to how best to proceed going forward. What some of them are finding should give the industry pause. During a webinar this week, Jonathan Foxx, president and managing director at Lenders Compliance Group, a consulting firm ...

With the mortgage lending industry’s use of marketing services agreements under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act likely hanging in the balance, the CFPB detailed its anti-kickback legal arguments against PHH Corp. and its mortgage units in its “reply” brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, filed earlier this month. In PHH Corp., et al., v. CFPB, the first main argument the bureau made is that PHH violated RESPA Section 8(a) because it entered into agreements with mortgage insurers so that whenever an insurer received a referral from PHH, the insurer paid PHH a kickback in the form of premiums for mortgage reinsurance. “PHH thus committed a separate violation every time it accepted a kickback ...