A much-anticipated Senate vote on the nomination of Carol Galante as FHA commissioner and assistant secretary of housing with the Department of Housing and Urban Development failed to materialize this week, reportedly due to the continuing Republican efforts to block her appointment. Word spread that a vote would take place after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, last week tentatively agreed to vote on the nomination sometime this week. But that has not happened. Both positions have been vacant since ...

Revised VA HAMP. The Department of Veterans Affairs has updated the instructions for modifying mortgage loans with a VA guarantee. Changes include clarification concerning occupancy status, an updated reference to another VA guidance on prior approval procedures and extension of the applicability of the said guidance. The changes were announced in Circular 26-10-6. New VA REO Management and Servicing Contractor. The Department of Veterans Affairs has provided details for transferring VA property management (real estate-owned) and portfolio loan servicing contracts for the VA home loan guaranty program from ...

The recently reduced premiums for the FHA Streamline Refinance program have resulted in an influx of refi applications, according to officials with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In the first 30 days after the premiums were reduced, monthly refi applications were on pace to be about eight times typical levels.“Where FHA normally processes about 17,000 applications per month, we’ve already seen more than 75,000 applications in less than three weeks,” HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development this week announced a major expansion of bulk sales of distressed FHA loans. Some 9,000 loans are up for auction on Sept. 12, nearly double the amount HUD initially expected to offer and four times the amount of loans sold through the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program since 2010. In April, HUD completed an auction of 279 FHA mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of $59.0 million. If the loans for sale in September have a similar average balance ...

Ten previously optional fields on the FHA’s TOTAL Scorecard will be required with the release of TOTAL Scorecard Version 3.0. Some pending applications will be “grandfathered” under the previous TOTAL Scorecard requirements for 90 days. The new required fields are: borrower paid closing costs, current housing expenses, gift letter amount, gift letter source, required investment, total closing costs, total fixed payment, seller concessions, downpayment and condominium indicator. The new version of the scorecard ...

HECM Changes. HUD announced this week that all FHA-approved mortgagees that remit insurance premiums on home-equity conversion mortgages must submit certain information to HUD by July 25 if they have not been involved with the Home Equity Reverse Mortgage Information Technology project. The FHA plans to change the process used to remit MIPs for the HECM program in the near future. Upcoming Ginnie Changes. During the monthly Ginnie Mae issuer outreach call this week, Ginnie officials announced that they will ... [Includes three briefs]

Record low interest rates and loosened underwriting guidelines have induced strong refinance activity during the first half of 2012. Industry participants agree that the refi boom will continue through the third quarter of 2012, but then predictions get hazy. During Wells Fargo’s earnings presentation for the second quarter last week, Timothy Sloan, a senior executive vice president and CFO at the bank, downplayed suggestions that refi activity has declined this month compared with June. “The business is good and we’re optimistic about it,” he said. “Very optimistic,” added...

Thousands of ineligible tax cheats received FHA-insured mortgage loans under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 even though federal tax regulations prohibited tax debtors from obtaining government-backed mortgages, the Government Accountability Office reported in a new study. The report found that 6,327 borrowers, who owed a total of $77.6 million in federal taxes, were able to obtain more than $1.44 billion in FHA-insured mortgages under the ARRA. Of these borrowers, 3,815 individuals claimed and received $27.4 million under the statute’s temporary First-Time Homebuyer Credit program. The GAO’s analysis included ...

Some FHA borrowers are still having difficulty obtaining lower-cost streamline refinancing even though the FHA has said it will accept streamline loans with “no credit check, income verification or appraisal.” Borrowers said they are still encountering credit checks, income verification and other obstacles, which indicate that lenders are disregarding FHA instructions regarding the enhanced streamline refi program. Even though FHA guidelines are in place, lenders are adding their credit overlays to the detriment of FHA borrowers seeking to ...

Given the features of the enhanced FHA streamline refinancing product, investors will be focusing on the FHA low mortgage-insurance premium (MIP) pools in the coming months, according to analysts with Barclays Research. Barclay’s analysts estimate that 27 percent of outstanding Ginnie Mae MBS pools are eligible for streamline refinancing, which could translate to $36 billion in new annual Ginnie Mae issuance. Approximately $293.0 billion of Ginnie Mae’s $1 trillion-plus 30-year loan pools were originated before May 2009, analysts said. About 79 percent of the collateral underlying the pools are ...