The Department of Housing and Urban Development may need a huge cash infusion to modernize its antiquated information technology system, but Congress does not appear eager to provide the funding. Testifying before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies, HUD Secretary Ben Carson told lawmakers it would cost approximately $500 million to shift the agency’s archaic information technology system to the cloud. Carson said it is costing the department about $250 million annually to repair and maintain the legacy IT system, which is more than 40 years old. “We can keep patching and throwing away money or we can do what needs to be done and fix it for good,” he said. Subcommittee Chairman Mario Diaz-Balart, R-FL, appeared unfazed by Carson’s cost estimate but made no commitment during the ...
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 ...
Securitization of USDA loans by Ginnie Mae fell in the fourth quarter of 2017. Approximately $19.9 billion of USDA loans were delivered into Ginnie MBS pools in 2017, notwithstanding a 9.2 percent drop from the previous quarter, agency data show. On the other hand, year-over-year securitization of rural housing loans with a government guarantee rose 5.8 percent from 2016. Top-ranked Freedom Mortgage saw its USDA loan deliveries to Ginnie drop 16.2 percent during the fourth quarter, while its USDA securitization volume rose a whopping 78.9 percent from the previous year. Overall, Freedom accounted for $3.6 billion of USDA loans pooled in Ginnie MBS last year. Second-place PennyMac closed the year with $3.1 billion of securitized USDA loans, while Wells Fargo reported a 13.1 percent drop in the final quarter to end 2017 with $1.4 billion of rural housing loans in Ginnie MBS. Chase Home Finance sprang out ... [ Chart ]
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 ...
Lacking sufficient guidance, CitiMortgage improperly filed for 66 partial claims before completing loan modifications and reinstating the loans, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development inspector general. The finding arose from an IG audit of CitiMortgage’s processing of partial claims under the FHA-Home Affordable Modification Program. The audit was based on the financial institution’s volume of partial claims among lenders in the St. Louis, MO, metropolitan area. FHA-HAMP is a loss mitigation option, which uses a partial insurance claim, combined or separate from a loan modification, to reinstate a mortgage. Under a partial claim, FHA reimburses a lender’s advance of funds on behalf of the borrower in order to reinstate a delinquent mortgage. The IG said CitiMortgage did not have adequate policies and procedures to ensure the FHA-HAMP partial claims, combined with ...
The Department of Veterans Affairs recently clarified policy regarding lender use of credits or interest rates to pay veterans’ costs in VA home loans. Under VA regulations, lenders may charge and a veteran may pay a flat fee not exceeding 1 percent of the loan amount. The VA allows the charge provided it is in lieu of all other charges related to the costs of origination not expressly specified and allowed in the regulations. However, the agency has learned that some lenders are charging veterans interest-rate premiums in exchange for temporarily subsidizing the borrower’s monthly payments. “More precisely, an interest-rate premium is imposed as a charge for a cash advance on a loan principal,” the VA explained. While the agency allows lenders to charge borrowers for allowable costs, which may be made through an interest-rate adjustment, it clearly prohibits charges for impermissible costs, like ...
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