Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is planning to quiz top FHA officials about an apparently deliberate effort by the agency to withhold important information from Congress regarding the true financial health of the FHA insurance fund. In a recent letter to FHA Commissioner Carol Galante, Issa said that the stress test employed by Integrated Financial Engineering in its FY 2012 actuarial review of the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund yielded a more troubling result than what HUD reported to Congress in November last year. In the actuarial review, IFE reported that ...
Wells Fargo has reached an agreement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and fair housing advocacy groups to improve its handling of foreclosed and abandoned homes and resolve allegations of discrimination in the maintenance and marketing of real estate-owned properties. The National Fair Housing Alliance and several other fair housing groups filed a complaint with HUD in April last year after observing that Wells foreclosed homes in minority neighborhoods did not receive the same treatment and care as the banks REO properties in white neighborhoods. The NFHA, which conducted an ...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the reverse mortgage lending industry lauded the U.S. House of Representatives this week for passing bipartisan legislation that would allow the agency to make immediate, necessary changes to the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage Program while working simultaneously on implementing regulations. H.R. 2167, the Reverse Mortgage Stabilization Act of 2012, passed by voice vote after it was added to the House suspension calendar, which limits debate on noncontroversial bills for quick passage. Co-sponsored by Reps. Denny Heck, D-WA, and Mike Fitzpatrick, R-PA, the bill responds ...
The likelihood of new loans exceeding the statutory high-priced mortgage loan (HPML) threshold due to a recent policy change relating to FHA mortgage insurance premium payments is causing uneasiness among some lenders, said an industry trade group. This week, the Consumer Mortgage Coalition warned that lenders might not originate FHA-insured loans if they thought the new MIP policy would cause the mortgages to turn into HPMLs and subject them to increased liability. Specifically, the new MIP policy might prevent ...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued guidance on several FHA issues, including partial-claim documentation and delivery requirements, clarification regarding title approval at conveyance, interest rates for loss mitigation home-retention options, and subordination of partial-claim liens associated with FHA streamlined refinances. Partial Claim Documentation and Delivery Requirements (ML 2013-19. The guidance addresses the problem of many missing FHA partial-claim documents due to lenders failure to comply with HUD procedures for ...
HUD Takes Second Furlough. The Department of Housing and Urban Development this week announced the second of seven furlough days employees are scheduled to take due to mandatory, government-wide budget cuts: June 14. Sequestration went into effect March 1 because Congress failed to pass legislation on balanced deficit reduction. HUD employees took their first forced leave on May 24. Approximately $85 billion will be slashed from the federal budget for the remainder of the fiscal year. The next furlough date is July 5. HUD, however, may not need to ...
CFPB officials claim that lenders will originate non-qualified mortgages, though industry participants have been skeptical due to the liability involved with such loans. Raj Date, the former deputy director of the CFPB, detailed how his new firm will originate non-QMs.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency is holding a two-day, closed-door working group Thursday and Friday with force-placed insurance stakeholders following the FHFAs recent actions to shutter an insurance proposal by Fannie Mae and its policy proposal to develop a set of force-placed aligned standards.
Mortgage lenders are increasingly anxious that they may be blindsided by fair lending claims based on the disparate impact theory as they try to keep their business within the safe harbor for qualified mortgages under the new ability-to-repay rule. My concern is about whos going to do a QM and whos going to do [non-QM] ability-to-repay, and how can we somehow get a disparate impact out of this? said Charles Lewis, vice president of compliance services at the Missouri Bankers Association. Speaking at the American Bankers Associations regulatory compliance conference in Chicago early this week, Lewis urged...