Ginnie Mae has raised the servicing fee compensation for its Home Equity Conversion Mortgage-Backed Securities (HMBS) program. Currently issuers receive either a flat 6-to-75 basis points monthly servicing fee or a 25-75 bps servicing fee based on a portion of the mortgage interest rate. Effective for HMBS with an issue date on or after July 1, 2011, issuers must select a servicing fee margin of at least 36 bps and not exceeding ...

Mortgage compliance experts are bracing for up to 10,000 pages of new Dodd-Frank Act regulations that will make mortgage lending exponentially more difficult, according to industry officials at this week’s regulatory compliance conference sponsored by the American Bankers Association. “Dodd-Frank is going to increase the compliance burden, the risk of non-compliance and the cost of mortgage lending,” said David Kelly, executive vice president in charge of loan operations for FirstBank Data Corp. The new regulatory environment will feature...

Top servicers flagged for their faulty foreclosure practices will have an extra month to submit their mitigation plans, although federal regulators continue to bear down on the industry and are starting to withhold loss mitigation incentive payments from some companies. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision this week said they will give 12 servicers subject to consent orders extra time to submit “comprehensive action plans” that detail the financial resources the bank will commit to...

Commercial banks reported a measurable increase in earnings from their mortgage banking activities during the first quarter of 2011, but production volume is slowing and the industry continues to bear a significant burden from repurchase demands. Banks reported a combined $4.21 billion in mortgage banking income during the first quarter, according to an analysis of call report data by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter. That was up a healthy 20.8 percent from the last four months of 2010, though it trailed the industry’s mortgage...[includes one data chart]

The supply of home mortgage debt fell again in the first quarter of 2011 despite an increase in agency servicing, according to an Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of new data released by the Federal Reserve. Outstanding home mortgage debt declined to $10.458 trillion as of the end of March, down 0.7 percent from the end of 2010. That marked the 12th consecutive quarterly decline in the supply of mortgage servicing and took the market back to a level not seen since the end of 2006. Since peaking in the first quarter of 2008, the volume of home mortgage debt outstanding has...[includes two data charts]

More than two years after being placed into government conservatorship, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remain “critical supervisory concerns” as “key challenges” at both government-sponsored enterprises continue to compel the GSEs to rely on federal funding to stay afloat, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. FHFA’s annual report to Congress this week noted losses from mortgages originated from 2005 through 2008, as well as forecasted losses from that same pre-conservatorship period, remain a continuing source of...

Quicken Loans has rolled out a new mortgage loan program that covers all closing costs if the original loan is refinanced with Quicken within seven years. The program is called “Rate Drop Advantage,” and in order to qualify, a borrower must close a mortgage loan with Quicken Loans by Dec. 31. If the borrower decides to refinance in the next seven years – 90 days after the original loan closes to 84 months after close – the Rate Drop Advantage program will...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has issued an interim final regulation with a request for comments on changes to its existing Freedom of Information Act regulations. In its notice, published in the May 23 Federal Register, the FHFA said it is updating its existing FOIA regulations to include the FHFA Office of Inspector General. The FHFA-OIG did not yet exist when the Finance Agency’s original FOIA regulations were issued in 2009.

Look for short sales to pick up in popularity as a more palatable alternative for homeowners and mortgage loan holders to get out from under a delinquent property. However, experts caution that these quick turnaround transactions also provide ample opportunity for mortgage fraud. What had once been used for more of a niche purpose for a small segment of the buyer’s market, short sales have shot up as the market’s gone down. In 2000, about 4 percent of Freddie Mac’s workouts were short sales, compared to nearly...

In light of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s federal conservatorship status and the resulting control by the Treasury Department, the two GSEs are “effectively part of the government” and their operations should be reflected in the federal budget, according to the Congressional Budget Office.CBO has concluded that using a fair-value approach to estimate Fannie and Freddie’s subsidy costs is the best way to give Congress and taxpayers the most accurate accounting information.