The Mortgage Bankers Association is pushing back against a controversial budget proposal to charge FHA lenders a fee to pay for technology upgrades to help protect the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. Rather than charging lenders an “administrative fee,” the MBA prefers that funding improvements to FHA’s aging information systems be done through the appropriations process. “We need to be working with [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] and Congress to find ways to fund technology upgrades and risk-management improvements,” MBA Senior Vice President Pete Mills told Inside FHA/VA Lending. The White House’s budget plan for FY 2018 incorporates verbatim a proposal by the Obama administration to charge FHA lenders an administrative fee to support the upgrades needed to reduce MMI Fund losses. According to the previous administration’s estimate, the ...

Requesting a certificate of eligibility (COE) may be just a click away but the process is not without pitfalls, cautioned a panel of VA loan production officers during an industry conference. The panelists – Maxine Henry, program analyst with the VA Central Office; Ricardo Holloway, loan production officer with the Atlanta Regional Loan Center; and Paula Jesse, assistant loan production officer with the Denver RLC – urged veterans to order their COE early in the loan-application process to avoid any hiccups. A COE verifies to the lender that the veteran/borrower is eligible for a VA loan. Ordering early would help prevent last-minute delays, said Henry. “It is a problem if the veteran is at the closing table and still does not have a COE because it was ordered just a few days prior to closing,” Henry noted. Other potential hitches are incorrect documentation or receiving a VA determination that the ...

Loan processing for incompetent veterans presents significant challenges to VA lenders, requiring strict compliance with special guidance on top of the basic VA underwriting rules. One challenge is dealing with legal appointees who assist and represent veterans in legal transactions, such as applying for a mortgage loan. There are ways to determine whether a veteran is incompetent, said Mark Jamison, loan production officer (LPO) with the VA Cleveland Regional Center, during the VA Lender Conference in Kansas City, MO, last month. The Department of Veterans Affairs or a probate court can deem a veteran incompetent due to severe injury, medical conditions, mental disorders, and financial instability, he said. A mortgage lender could make a determination of incompetency if the initial purchase contract documents were signed by an attorney-in-fact, the veteran divulged the incompetency, or the ...

Poor agency oversight of voluntary lender terminations of FHA insurance on single-family home loans has resulted in increased risk for borrowers, premium overpayments and inaccurate records, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general. The IG gave the department a poor grade for failing to ensure that lenders properly processed voluntary terminations of FHA coverage and disclosed to borrowers the implications of such termination. The audit report blamed HUD’s failure on its inability to detect and deter lender errors while processing voluntary terminations, causing borrowers to lose FHA-insurance protection and overpay FHA premiums. HUD’s records also were skewed because of the oversight, the report noted. IG auditors reviewed a statistical sample of 115 of the 3,690 loans that were terminated voluntarily by lenders during fiscal years 2015 and ...

The Trump administration has revived a controversial proposal to tap FHA lenders to help pay for technology upgrades at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD is among nine federal agencies facing significant cuts in their discretionary budgets, al-though guarantee commitments for FHA’s single-family mortgage insurance program and Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities programs were kept at their previous fiscal levels, $400 billion and $500 billion, respectively. The White House budget plan incorporates...

The CFPB had numerous lapses in protecting sensitive, confidential enforcement information, according to a new report from the agency’s Office of Inspector General. The objective of the OIG’s evaluation was to determine whether the bureau’s Office of Enforcement has effective controls to manage and safeguard access to its confidential investigative information (CII). “We found that the Office of Enforcement’s sensitive information has not always been restricted to Office of Enforcement employees who needed access to that information to perform their assigned duties,” the OIG said. The watchdog said it found that 113 unique users had access to at least one electronic application when it was no longer relevant to the performance of their assigned duties. “These users continued to have ...

Officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say pilot deals that feature added primary mortgage insurance at the front end of the securitization process are a useful addition to their credit-risk transfer programs even if their future looks somewhat limited. Speaking at a CRT conference in New York City this week, Robert Schaefer, Fannie’s vice president for credit enhancement strategy and management, called the transactions “a good tool in the toolkit,” but said he doesn’t see them taking over the majority of CRTs. Gina Healy, Freddie’s vice president of credit risk transfers, agreed...

The Financial Services Roundtable recently called for enacting comprehensive housing finance reform, including reform of the FHA’s single-family mortgage insurance program while focusing the agency’s mission on first-time and low- and moderate-income borrowers. The FSR’s call came in a detailed response to President Trump’s executive order earlier this year directing the Treasury Department to conduct an assessment of financial regulations. For starters, the trade group urged...

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into certain single-family rental securitizations and is requesting information from market participants, including Green River Capital, a subsidiary of a private mortgage insurance company. The investigation first came to light when Radian Group disclosed in a recent 10-Q filing that Green River received a letter from the SEC requesting information regarding broker price opinions that GRC provided on properties included in SFR transactions. Green River, which falls under Radian’s Clayton Holdings affiliate, is...

An affiliate of NMI Holdings, Emeryville, CA, has issued a $211.3 million, 10-year credit-linked bond aimed at laying off risk at its mortgage insurance affiliate National MI. The notes were issued by NMI affiliate Oaktown Re Ltd. in three tranches: $98.61 million that filled the M-1 class, $98.61 million (M-2), and $14.1 million (B-1). The yields, respectively, are LIBOR plus 225 basis points, LIBOR plus 400 basis points, and LIBOR plus 575 bps. According to Robert Smith, National MI senior vice president of pricing and portfolio analytics, investors that bought the credit-linked notes were...