Issuance of new single-family Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities fell sharply in the first quarter of 2018, according to a new Inside FHA/VA Lending ranking and analysis. The agency issued $92.58 billion in MBS backed by forward mortgages during the first three months of 2018. That was down 14.8 percent from the previous three-month period and represented the lowest quarterly total since early 2015. The 1Q figure is based on truncated loan amounts reported in Ginnie’s loan-level MBS disclosures. Reports with unrounded single-family loan amounts show a total of $95.75 billion in first-quarter MBS issuance, including FHA reverse mortgages. The loan-level data reveal that production fell 6.9 percent from February to March, when just $28.21 billion of Ginnie single-family securities were issued. That was the lowest monthly volume since February 2015. Both the FHA and VA programs saw significant ... [Charts]

Ginnie Mae this week meted penalties to two of the nine issuers that received warnings from the agency for excessive refinancings of VA mortgages. Bloomberg reported that Ginnie barred NewDay Financial’s and Nations Lending’s from the more lucrative multi-issuer mortgage-backed securities pools, forcing them to issue custom pools. The restrictions became effective immediately. The agency’s action could reduce mortgage interest rates by 50 basis points for FHA and VA loans, which would benefit first-time homebuyers, said Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Cowen Washington Research Group. On the other hand, the issuers Ginnie limited to issuing custom pools will end up making loans with higher rates, the analyst noted. Ginnie’s action is part of a joint effort with the Department of Veterans Affairs to crack down on loan churning and faster prepayments of VA loans pooled in Ginnie securities. Loan churning ...

Ginnie Mae’s anti-churning efforts have narrowed the spread between Ginnie and Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities, prompting executives to say things are almost back to normal. In an interview with Inside FHA/VA Lending this week, Michael Bright, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Ginnie Mae, said the market and investors have responded positively to the agency’s efforts to resolve the churning and prepayment problems. “The Ginnie spread has fallen almost half a point and our securities have become more liquid,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re giving investors CPRs (constant prepayment rates) that they can model.” Bright said he cares less about the overall level of prepayment speeds. What he truly cares about is ensuring that when an investor purchases a Ginnie security, the prepay speed is correlated to changes in the interest rates and not the ...

FHA streamline refinancing fell significantly in 2017 from the previous year, according to an Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of agency data. Lenders closed 2017 with $37.4 billion of FHA streamline refi loans, buoyed by a 12.2 percent increase in origination in the fourth quarter. However, business was down a whopping 34.5 percent year-over-year. The segment ended the first quarter strongly with, $13.05 billion, but faltered over the next nine months. Streamline refinancing accounted for 15.8 percent of total FHA originations in 2017. Twelve states, led by California, each reported FHA streamline refi originations in excess of $1 billion last year. The Golden State closed the year with $8.05 billion of FHA-to-FHA refis, which accounted for 21 percent of all FHA loans in the state last year. The highest FHA streamline refi-producers after California were, in sequential order, ... [Charts]

Ginnie Mae’s credit-risk sharing concept is generating a lot of excitement among private credit enhancers, according to the company’s acting president. A planned risk-sharing pilot with FHA scheduled for later this year has the industry on its toes, said Michael Bright, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Ginnie Mae, during an interview this week with Inside FHA/VA Lending. “There is a line out the door of private companies willing to provide and take on credit risk and work with us on transactions where private capital would assume some of the risk,” he said. Ginnie is currently looking at ways to facilitate risk sharing between FHA and a private third party that would assume a first-loss position on a Ginnie security backed by FHA loans. Bright brought up the idea during remarks at the Structured Finance Industry Group conference in Las Vegas in February. He has been fielding calls since from ...

FHA insured approximately $1.9 billion of ineligible mortgage loans made to borrowers with delinquent federal debts or who are subject to federal administrative offset for past-due child support payments, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general. Approximately 9,500 loans were ineligible because the sources used by lenders to identify ineligible borrowers lacked sufficient information to raise red flags. In addition, FHA failed to guide lenders adequately in reviewing child support payments, the IG said. Federal law prohibits loans, loan guarantees or insurance to delinquent federal debtors, including those with delinquent child support subject to administrative offset, until the delinquency is resolved. Auditors drew a statistical sample of 60 loans from 13,927 FHA-insured loans that closed in 2016 and analyzed data on their related borrowers in the ...

A Department of Housing and Urban Development requirement for a face-to-face meeting has become quite a compliance challenge for lenders seeking mortgage foreclosure, according to legal experts. In Dan-Harry v. PNC Bank, a federal court in Rhode Island concluded that a borrower may bring a claim for damages and other remedies against a lender for failure to conduct a pre-foreclosure face-to-face meeting with the borrower – a requirement for breach of an FHA-insured mortgage. In an analysis of the court’s ruling, attorneys at the Chicago law firm Hinshaw & Culbertson said the decision is significant because the HUD regulation provides no private right of action. In addition, Rhode Island law does not recognize a cause of action for breach of good faith and reasonable diligence in foreclosure, they noted. Nevertheless, the legal experts pointed out that Rhode Island federal courts effectively ...

Legislation that would protect veterans from predatory lending that was passed by the Senate recently could have lasting impacts on the VA home-loan guaranty program, according to legal experts. S. 2155, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, passed on March 14 by a vote of 67-31. Sixteen Democrats and one Independent joined all 50 Republicans in passing the bill. Primarily, the bill would loosen stringent rules in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act designed to prevent the bad business practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis. A stand-alone bipartisan bill introduced by Sens. Thom Tillis, R-NC, and Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, in January was added to S. 2155 shortly before the Senate vote. The Tillis-Warren bill, Protecting Veterans from Predatory Lending Act of 2018, addresses the issue of serial refinancing, or loan churning, in which the victims are veterans. Churning refers to the ...

Ginnie Mae has passed the $1 billion mark for mortgage-backed securities issued through the Federal Home Loan Banks’ Mortgage Partnership Finance program. The MPF government MBS product was available initially to eligible participating members of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. The Chicago FHLB launched the MPF program in 1997 to give approved participating members access to the secondary mortgage market. Specifically, the program provided an outlet other than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for member institutions to sell fixed-rate mortgage loans (conventional, government, or jumbo). Most of the institutions participating in the MPF are small banks, thrifts and credit unions with assets of less than $400 million. The MPF government MBS product arose from a 2015 partnership between Ginnie Mae and the Chicago FHLB to issue Ginnie MBS backed by ...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service has extended its two-tiered income limit pilot for the single-family housing programs as it works on a rulemaking change. Started in FY 2015, the pilot determines the area loan limits for USDA loans, using 80 percent of the FHA loan limits for forward single-family loans. Since FY 2003, RHS has set area loan limits using either one of two methods. The first method is based on the cost to construct a modest home as provided by a nationally recognized cost provider, plus the market value of an improved lot based on recent sales data. The second method uses loan limits by the state housing authority as long as the limits do not exceed 10 percent of the cost plus the market value of an improved lot. Regardless of the method used, the area loan limit may not exceed the FHA single-family mortgage limit. However, the FHA loan limits created a ...