Ginnie Mae has made considerable progress in dealing with rapid prepayments on VA loans but prepayment speeds on Ginnie mortgage-backed securities in general continue to annoy investors. Prepay speeds on Ginnie MBS are now at the lowest since 2014 but it is not enough for agency Executive Vice President Maren Kasper to feel confident as she addressed the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association this week. “Our prepayment issue is not solved,” said Kasper, as she spoke on a panel with representatives of government-lending programs. The agency continues to hear from investors about the problem, she said. Kasper cited two instances where Ginnie officials were summoned to meetings in China and New York to explain the prepayments to irate investors. They threatened to stop purchasing Ginnie bonds, she said. Kasper declined to say how bad the ...

Ginnie Mae issuance of single-family mortgage-backed securities rode a homebuying wave during the third quarter of 2018, according to a new Inside FHA/VA Lending ranking and analysis. Ginnie issuers produced $105.63 billion of new MBS backed by forward mortgages during the July-September cycle, a 7.1 percent increase from the second quarter. That brought year-to-date production to $296.88 billion – down 11.3 percent from the first nine months of 2017. Purchase mortgages provided the boost for the Ginnie market. Some $75.69 billion of FHA and VA purchase mortgages were pooled in Ginnie MBS in the third quarter, a sturdy 13.1 percent increase from the previous period. Purchase loans accounted for 75.1 percent of FHA and VA loans securitized in the third quarter, compared to 64.7 percent for all of last year. Although production of these loans has gone up since the first quarter, year-to-date volume ... [Charts]

The reverse mortgage industry is supporting an FHA move to require a second appraisal for certain Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans. FHA did not seek public comment on the interim policy change, which subjects all HECM loans, effective Oct. 1, to a collateral risk assessment to ensure the appraisal of the property is not inflated. The new policy has wide support in the reverse mortgage industry. A study conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development last year found that 37 percent of appraisals on approximately 134,000 HECMs tested positive for over-valuation. The inflated HECM appraisals were at least 3 percent higher than estimates by FHA’s proprietary automated valuation model, according to FHA Commissioner Brian Montgomery. The same study also found that higher-than-expected losses in the HECM program could be attributed in part to ...

Mortgage servicing delays have caused the Department of Housing and Urban Development to pay a whopping $413 million for unnecessary interest and other expenses. The payment put a major dent on the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund and its ability to pay other claims or reduce FHA mortgage-insurance premiums, according to a report from the HUD inspector general. The amount covered interest payments and other costs on 27,634 preforeclosure claims over a five-year period. The costly setback could have been avoided had lenders completed servicing chores on defaulted FHA loans within their prescribed periods, the IG said. Although serviers were to blame, HUD reimbursed them through FHA insurance claims. The IG analyzed 100,077 preforeclosure claims paid from Aug. 1, 2012, through July 31, 2017. Auditors identified 30,061 claims that had ...

Use of FHA downpayment assistance from programs run by entities owned by Native American tribes may soon be under agency scrutiny. Industry stakeholders are pointing to a pre-rule notice the Department of Housing and Urban Development published last spring as an opportunity for HUD to clarify the use of downpayment assistance from parties other than those currently allowed to meet FHA’s 3.5 percent downpayment requirement. In an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register, HUD is seeking comment on the use of downpayment assistance as well as their approved sources, such as tribal providers, state and local housing finance agencies, government agents and non-profit organizations. One downpayment-assistance provider is the Chenoa Fund Loan Program, which is owned and operated by the Utah Cedar Band of Paiutes. The fund provides secondary financing to ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s failure to record indemnifications under a 2015 settlement agreement exposed the FHA insurance fund to potential losses of more than $47.4 million, according to an internal audit report. HUD’s Office of the Inspector General performed the audit to resolve issues related to two settlement agreements entered into by Fifth Third Bank and the Department of Justice. Fifth Third, a direct endorsement lender, had voluntarily disclosed to HUD 1,439 materially defective FHA loans that were originated between 2003 and 2013. HUD paid claims on 519 of those flawed loans, which generated more than $84.9 million in ineligible claims. In addition, FTB agreed to indemnify HUD for all losses for the remaining 920 FHA-insured mortgage loans. In January 2017, the bank voluntarily disclosed an additional 381 materially defective FHA loans. A HUD review of the ...

The federal statute that authorized the Department of Housing and Urban Development to establish the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program addresses only HUD’s authority to insure reverse mortgages and not the lender’s contractual right to foreclose, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has ruled. Affirming the district court’s decision in The Estate of Caldwell Jones, Jr., Executrix Vanessa Jones and Leah Grace Jones, Minor v. Live Well Financial Inc., the circuit court determined that the HECM statute did not prevent foreclosure pursuant to a reverse-mortgage contract originated before Aug. 4, 2014, even if the non-borrowing spouse continued to live in the mortgaged property. The question before the court was whether the statute can be read broadly to prevent foreclosure after the borrower’s death and prevent the non-borrowing spouse from being ejected from the ...

FHA Issues Waiver of Property Inspections in Disaster-Stricken California Counties. FHA has issued a waiver of its timing policy for completing property inspections prior to closing or endorsing a loan for FHA insurance. The waiver is in effect in presidentially declared major disaster areas in Lake and Shasta Counties, CA, that were ravaged by wildfires and high winds. FHA believes that the wildfires and high winds have stabilized so as not to cause any further damage to properties, even though FEMA has not declared “all clear” in the affected areas. The waiver allows damage inspections to be completed after Oct. 2, for properties located in the PDMDA. NC Commissioner of Banks Amends State Reverse Mortgage Rules. The North Carolina Commissioner of Banks recently amended its ...

Originations of government-insured mortgages rose 11.2 percent from the first to the second quarter of 2018, according to Inside Mortgage Finance estimates. That increase was slightly lower than the 17.1 percent gain in total first-lien originations over that period. The big winner for the second quarter was the jumbo sector, where loan volume surged 33.5 percent from the first three months of the year. On a year-to-date basis, government lending was down 12.6 percent from the first half of 2017. This reflects the steep decline in refinance lending in general, which affected FHA/VA production significantly. Jumbo lending was also down, by 6.6 percent, from the first six months of last year, but the conventional-conforming market saw a 4.2 percent gain at the midway point in 2018. FHA/VA loans accounted for 22.8 percent of first-lien originations in the first half of 2018. The government share for all of last year was ... [Chart]

It looks like the Department of Housing and Urban Development will not be able meet its September target date for rolling out its long-awaited FHA condominium reform rule. Such is the consensus among stakeholders whose hopes were raised when HUD Secretary Ben Carson told the House Financial Services Committee in June that he would be issuing the rule this month. “HUD and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (within the Office of Management and Budget) want to release the rules with the updated Single Family Handbook and they are still working on that,” said a real estate industry executive. He added that despite what Carson said at the committee hearing, “September is not likely for a release.” As of press time, the final condo reform rule had not yet been delivered for OMB review, a process that in the past has taken months to complete. In contrast, it took about a ...