The reverse mortgage lending industry has asked Senate lawmakers to expand the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s authority to strengthen its oversight of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program. Testifying before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs recently, Peter Bell, president of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association, said it is crucial for HUD to be able to act swiftly to reduce the risk the program poses to the FHA insurance fund. Bell said HUD needs to implement changes “in a matter of months, not years” and for that to happen, it would need authority from Congress to ...

The FHA’s efforts at underwriting reform and reducing its footprint to give way to private capital are nothing but an illusion of reform, according to the American Enterprise Institute. Raising the annual mortgage insurance premium and the required downpayment for FHA-insured loans greater than $625,500 as well as tightening the underwriting on loans with credit scores of 620 or below would impact only a tiny percentage of FHA business, said Edward Pinto, a resident fellow at AEI. “These changes make great sound bites but clearly this is the illusion of reform,” he said. Both measures are part of FHA’s latest efforts to ...

Reverse Mortgage Solutions, a HECM lender bought by Walter Investment Management Corp. last fall, has received a $100 million warehouse line of credit from Royal Bank of Scotland, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The line is legally structured as a master repurchase agreement. However, it is also considered “uncommitted” and matures in February of 2014. RMS will use the money to fund new originations of HUD-backed home equity conversion mortgages. Several of the nation’s largest banks have exited the HECM space the past two years, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America. A handful of nonbanks have moved ...

The purchase mortgage business has been in the tank since the housing crash. Although home buying is on the upswing, will it be enough to replace the refi boom?

The National Association of Federal Credit Unions is urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take another look at the usefulness of APR disclosures, among other things.

Merger and acquisition activity is perking up in the mortgage market with a deal set for unveiling possibly by Friday afternoon or early next week.

Reverse Mortgage Solutions has tapped RBS for a large warehouse line of credit that matures next year.

Nationstar Mortgage earned $63.8 million in the fourth quarter as it continued to snatch up MSR packages.

Fannie Mae is about to offer $250 million of nonperforming mortgages for sale in the secondary market.

Warehouse banks that extend credit to nonbank residential lenders ended the fourth quarter with almost $40 billion in commitments on their books, their best quarter of the year, according to exclusive survey figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance. The top five warehouse banks – which control about half of the estimated total market – had $19.9 billion of commitments on their books, a 4 percent improvement from the third quarter. Compared to the end of March, commitments were up 37 percent. Wells Fargo, the largest buyer from correspondents, ranked...[Includes one data chart]