HUD to host hearing on appraisal bias; bipartisan Senate bill to inform veterans of home loan benefits introduced; USDA updates handbook; Ginnie Mae allows commingling in Platinum pool types; HUD expands funding for loans and grants in its Green and Resilient Retrofit Program; VA reduces premiums for Veterans’ Mortgage Life Insurance program.

Mark Jones, 2024 chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association, sympathized with lenders who are going through the uncertainties of a steep market downturn.

Protecting customer relationships should be increasingly important for servicers now as the connections will be valuable when interest rates eventually drop, said panelists at the MBA’s annual convention.

Susan Wachter, a real estate and finance professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said it must be the industry’s new mantra.

FHA Commissioner Julia Gordon cautioned attendees at the annual conference of the Mortgage Bankers Association not to expect a further cut to the mortgage insurance premium rate anytime soon.

Marina Walsh, vice president of industry analysis at the trade group, said she expects the mortgage industry to experience “a little more pain."

The mortgage industry and housing policymakers have more work to do in developing home loan products targeted to helping close the racial homeownership gap, speakers at an Urban Institute conference said.

Warehouse lender Texas Capital Bank claims it lost money after Ginnie Mae extinguished its interest in liens associated with the now-defunct Reverse Mortgage Funding.

Uncertainty over the future of interest rates is hampering the housing market, according to economists.

Both the FHA and VA programs saw increases, but the bulk of the growth in Ginnie issuance in the third quarter came from FHA loans.