11 Aug 10 Emergency Homeowner Loan Program
Word on the finance street is that the Federal government will soon announce the Emergency Homeowner Loan Program. The latest round mortgage bail-outs from the Obama Administration is said to be focused on aiding homeowners who have under-water mortgages.
According to CNNMoney, the Obama administration pledged another $3 billion in additional funds available to assist distressed homeowners in a foreclosure prevention effort. One part of the mortgage bail-out plan, includes a new $1 billion program that will offer self-employed home loans to unemployed borrowers at risk of losing their homes. The mortgage loan relief, which will be dispersed through non-profit and housing agencies, will carry 0% interest and be good for a maximum of $50,000 for up to two years. In the coming weeks, HUD said it will announce details about the new loan relief program, called the Emergency Homeowner Loan Program.
It was not clear whether or not the Emergency Homeowner Loan Program would be part of the recently discussed bail-out for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. HUD announced just last week more government loan relief with the FHA short refinance program that was created to help homeowners refinance their under-water mortgages. It also wasn’t clear whether or not the FHA short refinance program would be part of the Emergency Homeowner Loan Program. HUD was unavailable for comment.
Recent Government Mortgage Relief Programs
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The administration also added $2 billion in home loan aid for its mortgage program that helps struggling homeowners in the states with highest unemployment rates. Today, the Obama administration announced an additional $2 billion that will expand the mortgage relief program to a total of 17 states and the nation’s capital. The regions chosen have suffered significant home value depreciation, high unemployment and high foreclosure rates well above than the national average for a year.
Tags: Emergency Homeowner Loan Program, FHA short refinance program, self-employed home loans, under-water mortgages
09 Aug 10 1 in 5 Homes Are Plagued with Underwater Mortgages
Zillow published a mortgage report that revealed that more 1 in 5 U.S. homes have a mortgage that is presently underwater. This is the primary reason that so many lenders are offering loan modification agreements in regions that have seen significant declines in home values. Fewer Americans are strategically defaulting on their mortgage loans, foreclosure rates continue to increase with RealtyTrac reporting a first-quarter foreclosure rate of 1.65 million. Analysts project that the number of mortgage defaults, repossessions and scheduled auctions are likely to reach 3 million by the end of the year. Read the original article online > 20% of US Mortgage Loans Under-Water
06 Aug 10 Government Mortgage Help with FHA Short Refi Program
HUD announced another round of government mortgage help with their new FHA Short Refinance program. Many homeowners are struggling as their home values have declined dramatically in recent years. In fact many borrowers are actually underwater with their mortgage balance greater than their home value. According to HUD, 11.3 million borrowers were underwater with their home loan and most would welcome the government mortgage help. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan told a group in a recent speech that California, Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Nevada were the states with the most underwater home loans.
The FHA Loan Blog reported that many lending companies who are approved to originate FHA loan products believe that this mortgage relief initiative will help out a lot of struggling homeowners, but the reality is that most borrowers will be unable to meet the FHA loan requirements.
Tags: FHA short refi, Government Mortgage Help, underwater home loans
28 Jul 10 Is the Financial Reform Bill Flawed?
Much to the surprise of many pundits, the recently signed Financial Reform Bill did not outline guidelines for regulators to begin crafting the future of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. Although this was viewed as an oversight by most, it was the right move because it will allow our political and financial leadership to focus on repairing the mortgage finance system. Remember that the government loan programs Fannie, Freddie, VA and FHA loans maintain nearly 96% of the mortgage market-share yet they are exempt from most of the financial reform repercussions.
Watch Glen Beck Discuss the Pitfalls of Finance Reform Bill on Fox News
Read the original mortgage news article > Financial Reform Bill Flawed?
Tags: financial reform bill
21 Jul 10 California Mortgage Brokers Get Criminal Checks Yet Banks Are Exempt
One would think after the recent mortgage debacle and housing crisis that the government would really want to implement mortgage loan reform that closed the “loop holes” to significantly reduce the foreclosures and loan defaults that have been costing U.S. tax-payers billions of dollars each year. California mortgage brokers face closer scrutiny as the state adopts a federal law aimed at curbing the fraud and abuse that helped decimate the housing market. According to Bloomberg, mortgage brokers in the nation’s most populous state will be required by July 31th to have passed criminal-background and credit checks, as well as licensing exams. California, along with about a third of U.S. states, previously didn’t require mortgage sellers to have individual licenses.
That’s about to change as all states by January 1st must implement the national rules, which Congress developed after record mortgage defaults and foreclosures were triggered by rampant lending to people who couldn’t afford to repay their loans or never intended to. Brokers will be assigned identification numbers to enable regulators and borrowers to track their lending histories. “When someone buys 100 shares of stock, they must go through a licensed securities broker,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and co-sponsor of the law, the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008. “Until recently, some purchased their home — a far more valuable asset — through an independent mortgage broker or lender who may have had a criminal background or no license at all. This lack of accountability enabled unscrupulous brokers to commit fraud at the expense of unsuspecting homebuyers.”
Why Are Banks Exempt?
The 2008 law, dubbed the SAFE Act, doesn’t require testing for mortgage brokers at federally regulated mortgage lenders. That may help companies such as BofA Home Loans, Citi Mortgage and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage increase market share because they face fewer training requirements and costs, said William Emerson, chief executive officer of Quicken Loans Inc., a closely held nonbank lender in Livonia, Michigan. “For large, independent, nonbank lenders, this is certainly an operational challenge,” Emerson, whose company originated $25 billion in mortgages in 2009, said in a telephone interview. “It certainly adds costs.” Bank of America and Wells Fargo together accounted for 46 % of the residential-lending market in the first quarter, according to data compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance Publications in Bethesda, Maryland. Of $320 billion in new mortgages in the quarter, about $184 billion, or 57 %, was originated by lenders whose employees are exempt from the licensing exams, according to Inside Mortgage Finance data. “You see mortgage brokers take the test and fail it and wind up working for banks,” Emerson said. “If you can’t pass a test and work for an independent, why are you qualified to work for a bank?” According to according to Pete Marks from the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, about 71 % of people who took the national broker exams passed on the first try, which was assigned responsibility under the SAFE Act to maintain the licensing system and national registry. Mortgage originators must also pass separate tests in each state they do business.
Increased Protections from Bank Lenders
Bank of America, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, conducts background investigations and credit checks of all hires and provides training in legal compliance and regulations, Terry Francisco, a spokesman, said in an e-mail. Wells Fargo takes similar precautions, said Jason Menke, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based bank.
Borrowers were victimized last year by brokers engaged in fraudulent loan-modification plans, home appraisals and applications for the first-time homebuyer tax credits, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said June 17 in its annual report on mortgage fraud. The top states for fraud in 2009 were California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Arizona, based on law enforcement and industry data, according to the bureau. In a law-enforcement crackdown on mortgage fraud announced by the FBI on June 17, mortgage brokers accounted for 169 of the 1,215 defendants charged in the operation; 56 of the 485 arrests; and 46 of the 336 convictions to date. “From homebuyers to lenders, mortgage fraud has had a resounding impact on the nation’s economy,” FBI Director Robert Mueller said in a statement.
Mortgage Fraud Repercussions
According to RealtyTrac Inc, mortgage companies will take-over more than one million homes this year, forecast July 15th. Mortgage defaults soared to 10.1 % and foreclosures reached 4.63 % in the first quarter, both records, the Mortgage Bankers Association said May 19. Median existing-home prices have fallen 22 % to $179,600 since the July 2006 peak, the National Association of Realtors said June 22.
The number of U.S. mortgage brokers shrank to 246,900 in May, less than half of the February 2006 high of 504,400, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The decline was driven by tighter compliance standards, said David Olson, president of Access Mortgage Research & Consulting, a firm in Columbia, Maryland, that works with residential lenders.
The personal identification number will help weed out brokers with histories of writing home loans that quickly go bad, said Ann Fulmer, vice president of Interthinx Inc., an Agoura Hills, California-based company that sells mortgage-fraud detection software. “One of the things we saw over and over during the boom was that a bad actor would work at a shop for several months, frequently ending up as the ‘top producer,’ and then leave for presumably greener pastures,” Fulmer said in an e-mail. “In actuality, they usually left because their bad loans were about to start blowing up and, if they stayed, they’d be discovered.”
Mortgage Modification Implications
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees compliance with the SAFE Act, has proposed that employees handling loan modifications for struggling homeowners also meet the licensing requirements, a policy opposed by banks. Mandating licenses for loan modification advisors would slow hiring and stall efforts to reduce foreclosures, said John Courson, CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “We say this is not originating a new loan, it’s reducing the terms of their loan to get them to affordability,” he said in a telephone interview.
The housing department hasn’t set a deadline for a decision, said Lemar Wooley, a spokesman. It costs $3,000 to $6,000 to train and pay the fees for each new employee to comply with the mortgage-licensing system, said Anthony Hsieh, CEO of LoanDepot.com, an online mortgage originator based in Irvine, California. “The law is supposed to make sure we kick the bad ones out,” said Hsieh. “It could be the opposite — keep the good ones out.”
States with the highest fraud and foreclosure rates are among the last to put the national mortgage-licensing system in place. Nevada, which had the highest foreclosure rate in the first half of this year, goes live Oct. 1. Behind the delay was the state’s multilevel approval process, said Elisabeth Daniels, a spokeswoman for Nevada’s Department of Business and Finance. Florida, where a 2008 Miami Herald investigation found state regulators allowed 10,529 people with criminal backgrounds to work in the mortgage industry, also is scheduled to begin issuing licenses Oct. 1. States including Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio and Virginia have already adopted the SAFE Act. Article written by John Gittelsohn for Bloomberg
Tags: California mortgage brokers
14 Jul 10 Prime-Rated Mortgage Loan Security Delinquencies Increase
According to Fitch Ratings serious delinquencies of U.S. prime-rated residential mortgages rose in June from May, the 37th-straight month of sequential gains, though Alt-A and subprime mortgages extended a recent trend of declines. While noting the continued drops are “noteworthy,” the portion of borrowers who had been current in the prior month but fell behind–or roll rate–remains elevated. “The persistently high roll rates indicate that the delinquency declines are more a reflection of increased property liquidation and ongoing loan-modification activity than of widespread improvement in home loan payment performance,” said Fitch’s Vincent Barberio.
Home loan delinquencies have shown signs of plateau in recent months, with a number of measures showing their first declines since 2007, when the housing bubble began to lose air. Delinquencies of 60 days or more on prime-rated jumbo mortgages, or those of at least $417,000, rose to 10.4% in June from 6.4% a year earlier and 10.3% in May. Such loans saw the biggest increase in delinquencies last year among home borrowings, though the overall rate remains far below those of other mortgage types. Roll rates remained above 1% after dipping below that level in April, but were lower than their 1.4% peak in March.
The prime-rated jumbo loans make up the vast majority of the prime-rated mortgage loans in Fitch’s readings. Serious delinquencies for Alt-A loans–typically given to prime-rated borrowers who did not document assets and/or income, declined to 33.7% in June from 33.9% in May, but were up from 29.1% a year earlier. Roll rates rose on month to 3.4% from 3.1%. Prior to a sharp April drop, roll rates haven’t fallen below 3% since June 2008. Subprime delinquencies dropped to 43.7% from 44.8% in May but were above the prior year’s 41.2% The June roll rate fell to 4.2% from 4.3% sequentially but was well below the 12-month average of 5.3%. Article was written by Tess Stynes, Dow Jones Newswires
Tags: Fitch Ratings, subprime mortgages
08 Jul 10 Wells Fargo Announces Nearly 4000 Layoffs in Consumer Finance Unit
Wells Fargo Announced Thursday that it would no longer originate subprime home loans and were closing their finance division that specialized in those higher risked loans. According to Reuters Wells Fargo was poised to close their consumer finance division that was established a hundred years ago. Even though Wells Fargo has a reputation as a prime mortgage lender that had conservative lending guidelines they had been struggling with delinquencies and loan defaults from their own bad credit home mortgages in addition to mortgage portfolios it acquired from Wachovia Corporation when they recently took them over.
Wells Fargo announced they were closing 638 Wells Fargo Financial offices, which increased its number of retail branches to 6,600 after the Wachovia merger. The bank also has 2,200 Wells Fargo Home Mortgage offices and will eliminate about 2,800 employees from its Wells Fargo Financial unit and will most likely slash another 1,000 jobs in the next year.
According to Dave Kvamme, chief executive of Wells Fargo Financial in Des Moines, “The nonprime real estate business had really declined dramatically over the last 12 to 18 months.” He believed that that Wells waited too long to convert their loan officers from originating subprime loans to FHA mortgage loans too late. As the non-prime home loans contributed to the increased loan defaults that put the company in a position of risk they no longer were comfortable with. Kvamme continued, “The bank has switched from offering subprime mortgages to offering FHA home loans guaranteed by the government.”
Tags: bad credit home mortgages subprime home loans, Consumer Finance Unit, Wachovia Corporation, Wells Fargo, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage
01 Jul 10 FHA and VA Get Exemptions in Finance Reform Bill
According to a report from the American Banker, the Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs were awarded exemptions in the finance reform bill that passed last week. From a loan origination perspective, VA and FHA lenders would be getting an unfair advantage. The reality is that in today’s mortgage market loan companies are offering FHA or VA or both loan products so will this have a dampening effect? This could pose more of a risk of defaults on FHA and VA home loans. So FHA and VA home loans Former MBA chairman David Kittle thinks FHA is getting a pass from Congress in this bill.
How will the Exemptions Effect the Non Government Mortgage Companies?
Under the final mortgage reform bill, federal banking agencies, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Federal Housing Finance Agency will draft rules establishing underwriting standards and allowable product features for these fully documented loans. Qualified home loans also have to meet a new and tougher “ability to repay” standard in the bill along with a 3% limit on points and fees and a separate 2% limit on bona fide discount points. Regulators have the flexibility to set risk-retention requirements lower than 5% for residential loans that don’t meet the qualified mortgage test.
Balloon, negative amortization, and most interest-only notes will be excluded from the definition but debt-to-income ratios and verification practices must be defined by regulators and could change. The bill, as expected, gives little boost to a revival of the private-label securitization market. “Time and time again we keep hearing that we need the private sector to jump in, yet all the regulations that are being passed are keeping them out of the game, on the bench, on the sidelines,” said Sylvia Alayon, senior vice president of national operations at due diligence firm Capital Markets Assessment Corp. “We do need the private sector because many loans, like jumbo loans, can never be absorbed by the government agencies, and they represent a significant part of the market.”
Still, mortgage insiders were relieved that the mortgage reform bill will not force them to retain risk on all securitizations, regardless of loan characteristics, as in the initial language they had lobbied against. “It’s nice to win one,” said Lewis Ranieri, co-inventor of the mortgage-backed security. Read the original mortgage reform article online. > FHA Loan Program is Exempt from Risk in Mortgage Reform Bill
20 Jun 10 California Loan Modification Bill SB 1275
According to the LA Times, SB 1275 would prevent lenders from foreclosing on borrowers who are seeking to modify their home mortgages. California Senators Mark Leno and Darrell Steinberg are proposing to extend the same protection to all Californian homeowners making an effort to get a loan modification. The California loan modification bill (SB 1275) would stop a lender or mortgage service company from initiating the foreclosure process until after a mortgage loan modification application was denied. Read the original article online > Are California Loan Modification Plans Working for Lenders?
17 Jun 10 Homebuyer Tax Credit Extension Approved
The Senate approved a plan today that give homebuyers an extra three months to finish qualifying for federal tax incentives that boosted home sales this spring. Mortgage lenders have been backed up trying to process these mortgage loans to meet the deadline. The move would give buyers until September 30th to complete their purchases and qualify for tax credits of up to $8,000. Under the current terms, buyers had until April 30 to get a signed sales contract and until June 30 to complete the sale. The proposal, approved by a 60-37 vote, would only allow people who already have signed contracts to finish at the later date. About 180,000 homebuyers who already signed purchase agreements would otherwise miss the deadline.
The Realtors group has been pushing hard in Congress for the extension. Home mortgage lenders, the trade group says, have been swamped with borrowers trying to get approved by the end of the month. Many potential borrowers are unlikely to make the deadline. “If Congress fails to act promptly, then prospective homebuyers might not get the benefit of the homebuyer tax credit, even though they have completed contracts,” the Realtors said a a letter to lawmakers.
First-time home buyers were eligible for a tax credit of up to $8,000. Current owners who bought and moved into another home could qualify for a credit of up to $6,500. The $140 million cost of the measure would be financed by denying businesses the ability to deduct from their taxes punitive damages paid when losing lawsuits or judgments.
Tags: Homebuyer Tax Credit
10 Jun 10 Refinance Applications Drop
According to Mortgage Refinancing Buzz, the home refinance applications fell last week. They noted that the “pool of eligible borrowers eligible for a home refinance has been shrinking significantly as lenders tighten refinance guidelines.” Home purchase loan applications dropped 5.625% last week which is down 42% since the end of April when the home buyer tax credit expired. The refinance index is seriously ailing even though fixed mortgage rates are below 5%. Mortgage refinance activity dropped 14% last week. Michael Fratantoni writes, “Despite the historically low mortgage rates, many homeowners can’t qualify because of negative equity or bad credit.” FHA refinance loans are available but borrowers can’t have any late mortgage payments being reported from their lender in the last year. In addition most FHA lenders are requiring a minimum of a 640 fico score, so that is eliminating millions of borrowers from home refinancing. Read the original article online > Credit Problems Hindering Mortgage Refinancing.
Tags: refinance guidelines
25 May 10 No 2nd Mortgage Modifications for Obama Loan Relief Efforts
According to the Huffington Post, 11 million homeowners owe more on their home loan than their house is worth, putting them “underwater.” Obama’s 2nd mortgage modification program has failed miserably because after one year and millions of 2nd loan candidates they have not modified even one second mortgage loan. This mortgage relief plan was supposed to reward mortgage servicers to coordinate principal reductions on second mortgage loans when the first mortgage is modified under the administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program.
In today’s upside-down market, homeowners who are stuck with under-water mortgages are seeking principal reductions. Many second mortgage lenders are actually lowering the principal for these borrowers because in many cases it is a better option than taking over the property from a foreclosure or surrender. Loan modification sthat simply lower the interest rate are often not enough for homeowners residing in these heavily depreciated regions like Southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix, Arizona. According to Citi’s regulatory filings, about 28% of its first mortgages are now worth more than the underlying assets, along with about 42% of their second mortgages. Read the original article > Obama Second Mortgage Loan Modification Plan Failing
Tags: Home Affordable Modification Program, principal reductions, second mortgage loans
