Wells Fargo announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission recently completed an investigation of the company’s disclosures from mortgage-backed security offering documents and no enforcement action will be taken. Arcus Lending, a mortgage broker and a direct lender in California, recently started offering an 80/10/10 mortgage in an effort to allow borrowers to avoid private mortgage insurance. “There is a huge need for such a program and very few lenders ... [Includes two briefs]

The mortgage banking industry is urging Congress to reject the FHA’s call to eliminate the existing “knew or should have known” standard in the National Housing Act in connection with an agency proposal to extend indemnification authority to all direct-endorsement lenders. Both proposals are part of legislative and administrative measures sought by the FHA to strengthen its capability to manage risk and protect its Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. A recent independent actuarial review of the fund found that in FY 2012 the economic value of the FHA’s single-family portfolio had dropped to negative $13.5 billion (excluding Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans) and that ...

FHA endorsements jumped 18.8 percent in October from the previous month and by more than half from a year ago, with mortgagees accounting for 80 percent of production, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of FHA data. FHA originations, excluding Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans, totaled $22.8 billion in October, up from $19.2 billion in September and 56.4 percent more than a year ago. Fixed-rate forward mortgages accounted for nearly all FHA loans produced during the month, with purchase mortgages having a slight edge in the mix over refinances. Top-ranked Wells Fargo outdid other lenders in October with ...

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said he plans to file more lawsuits against non-agency MBS issuers using the Martin Act, which allows platform-wide cases as opposed to cases focused on specific deals. “It’s not about one deal or five deals or 10 deals, it’s about the entire course of conduct,” he said last week after filing a platform-wide lawsuit against Credit Suisse Securities. The lawsuit was filed as part of the RMBS Working Group’s efforts, including a similar lawsuit Schneiderman filed in October against JPMorgan Chase. “The actions you have seen...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development warned that an extraordinarily high percentage of loans in claim status can trigger a lender monitoring review to ensure the lender’s capacity to meet indemnification requirements. A high loan defect rate may be one of several factors used to target FHA lenders for a special review to determine the amount of risk a lender might pose to the safety and soundness of the FHA’s single-family mortgage insurance program, according to Justin Burch, director of the Quality Assurance Division at FHA during a webinar hosted this week by Inside Mortgage Finance. “If you are a lender that is...

The conforming mortgage market continued to dominate new loan originations during the third quarter of 2012, accounting for a whopping 85.7 percent of the period’s robust $475 billion in new originations, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking. The conforming market – which includes loans with government insurance and conventional mortgages up to the eligible loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – represented 84.5 percent of new originations in 2011. During 2010, the conforming market accounted for a record 90.1 percent of new loan production. The jumbo sector made...[Includes two data charts]

Portfolio lending by community banks could be treated differently than other types of lending under pending Basel III capital requirements, according to recent indications from federal regulators. The potential exceptions for community banks follow strong lobbying from lenders as well as bipartisan support in Congress. “While we strongly believe that finalizing the regulations is critically important for certainty and planning, we also believe there are merits to considering alternative, simpler approaches to ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will raise the annual insurance premium on new FHA originations, reverse the agency’s current policy on mortgage insurance premium cancellation and institute other policy changes to improve the health of the FHA insurance fund. The new measures aim to offset significant losses from FHA’s legacy loans, which have caused significant stress to the agency’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. Results of a new FHA actuarial audit showed that the stress has plunged the MMI Fund into a deep hole, revealing negative capital of $16.3 billion (negative $13.5 billion excluding Home Equity Conversion Mortgages) on a $1.13 trillion FHA portfolio. The capital reserve ratio fell ...

The top three rating services continued to dominate the new issuance market in non-mortgage ABS during the first nine months of 2012, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis, but the biggest player in the non-agency MBS market was DBRS. Moody’s Investors Service rated 69.7 percent of the non-mortgage ABS issued in 2012 as of the end of the third quarter, down slightly from its 70.4 percent share of the 2011 market. The company’s strengths were in vehicle finance and business loan ABS, where it captured more than three-quarters of new issuance by dollar volume. Standard & Poor’s ranked...[Includes two data charts]

According to the latest subprime servicer ranking from Inside Nonconforming Markets, only two major servicers increased their subprime portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2012 compared with either the previous quarter or the third quarter of 2011: Ocwen Financial and Homeward Residential, which Ocwen intends to acquire in December. Both of the servicers – and eight of the top 15 subprime servicers – are nonbanks. Nonbank special servicers have increased their ... [Includes one data chart]