VA Home Loan Program Celebrates 20-Millionth Loan Beneficiary. The Department of Veterans Affairs this week commemorated the 20-millionth recipient of a VA loan under the agency’s Home Loan Guaranty Program. Agency officials held a ceremony at the Woodbridge, VA, home of the loan’s recipient, Mrs. Elizabeth Carpenter, whose husband, Capt. Matthew Carpenter, passed away in 2010. Since 1944 as part of the original GI Bill of Rights, the VA has been providing guarantees to 30-year mortgage loans with low interest rates and has guaranteed ...

Mortgages originated by lenders’ retail production programs accounted for 60.7 percent of single-family loans securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the third quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis. Although many lenders have made strategic choices to focus on retail and scale back or abandon the wholesale market, a key factor in the dominance of retail originations was the heavy volume of refinance lending. Servicers continue to retain a significant share of their customers who refinance, and in programs like the Home Affordable Refinance Program for underwater Fannie and Freddie borrowers, retail captures the overwhelming share of the business. Loan level data from the government-sponsored enterprises do reveal, however, that mortgage brokers are contributing to the increase in HARP lending. Brokers tend...[Includes two data charts]

Just two institutions – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – end up securitizing the vast majority of conventional home loans, but a large universe of lenders deliver a significantly diverse supply of loans to the government-sponsored enterprises. A new Inside Mortgage Finance special report based on loan-level securities disclosures reveals that 1,848 different institutions delivered single-family mortgages to the two GSEs during the third quarter. They ranged in size from Wells Fargo, which delivered nearly a quarter of mortgages securitized by Fannie and Freddie during the period, to Wisconsin-based Universal Mortgage Corp., which sold one small $39,000 loan to Fannie during the period. The report, GSE Seller Profile: 3Q12, shows...

Four borrowers from Alabama with adjustable-rate mortgages filed a class-action lawsuit this month against 12 banks that establish the London Interbank Offered Rate. The lawsuit suggests that more than 10,000 borrowers meet the class specifications, which cover loans originated from 2000 through 2009, and that the banks made millions of dollars or even billions due to alleged collusion. “This matter arises from a global conspiracy to fix or set LIBOR – the reference point for setting interest rates on ARMs and other loans – by a cabal of prominent financial institutions,” according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit is believed to be the first from borrowers regarding LIBOR manipulation. The plaintiffs claim...

The Supreme Court of the United States has delayed a decision to review a case that rests on the disparate impact theory of discrimination in housing and mortgage lending. The case, Township of Mount Holly, NJ, et al., Petitioners v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action, Inc., et al., was listed on the court’s conference schedule at the end of last week, but the justices took no action. Mount Holly is now scheduled to be considered at the court’s next conference on Oct. 26. If certiorari is granted...

The mortgage lending industry is now grappling with a number of potential compliance challenges with the loan originator compensation rule as currently proposed by the CFPB, with the treatment of proxies and the “zero-zero” alternative mortgage near the top of the short list. An earlier Federal Reserve rulemaking prohibited compensation based on the terms of a loan or proxies for loan terms. “The problem there is the existing rule does not define what exactly that is,” said Richard Andreano, practice group leader of the mortgage banking group at Ballard Spahr, during an...

The Federal Trade Commission has called on the bureau to do more consumer testing before it comes out with a finalized version of its streamlined, consolidated Truth in Lending Act and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act consumer mortgage disclosure rulemaking. The FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, Bureau of Economics and Office of Policy Planning submitted a comment letter to the CFPB stating that the proposed disclosures “will likely improve the information that consumers receive under current federal regulations” because they “are generally simpler and less...

Bank and thrift holdings of home-equity loans continue to decline, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database, with lenders hesitant to pursue new originations. The low interest rate environment for first liens has not particularly extended to HELs, with interest rates above 5.00 percent often offered to borrowers looking into a home-equity loan. Banks and thrifts held $1.14 trillion in home-equity lines-of-credit, HELOC commitments and closed-end second liens ... [Includes one data chart]

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will implement a new definition for subprime mortgages beginning April 1, 2013. The definition will apply to banks with assets of $10 billion or more as part of the FDIC’s Large Bank Pricing model, which determines deposit insurance rates. The reporting deadline was revealed this week as the FDIC published a final rule to determine Deposit Insurance Fund assessment rates for large and highly complex insured depository institutions. The rule was prompted after ...

Despite problems associated with the program, the FHA 203(k) Rehabilitation Mortgage Program has seen some modest production gains during the last few quarters, according to an Inside FHA Lending analysis of FHA data. Top FHA 203(k) lenders reported $1.8 billion in total originations during the first six months of 2012, with the top five lenders accounting for 46.9 percent of production. Production rose 8.1 percent from the first quarter to the second, from $851.2 million to $920.5 million. Purchase fixer-uppers comprised ... [Includes 1 chart]