Lead Story
Assistance Limited for HFAs
By Peter Schroeder
Treasury Department officials are warning state and local housing finance agencies that the Obama administration's recently unveiled temporary bond purchase program is oversubscribed and that agencies will likely receive less assistance than they requested as a result.
The officials issued the warning late last week and asked the HFAs to identify their peak years of issuance from 2004 to 2008 for both single-family and multifamily issues to help determine how much they should receive under the relief program.
The scale-back comes after Michael Barr, Treasury assistant secretary for financial institutions, last month declined to put a dollar amount on the program and instead told reporters it would be sized to "meet demand."
Daily Mortgage News Briefing
Last updated: November 7, 2009
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Even though residential originations swelled in the third quarter, the mortgage banking and brokerage sectors continued to shed jobs in September, according to new government figures.
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The Treasury Department has turned down Fannie Mae's request to sell roughly $2.6 billion in low-income housing tax credits to Goldman Sachs.
Click here for more...Residential servicers, a sector that is grappling with a potential tidal wave of loan modifications, are beginning to hire "like crazy" according to Mary Coffin, a senior servicing executive with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.
Click here for more...With the nation's unemployment rate busting through the 10% mark in October, President Obama on Friday signed legislation extending the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit and giving additional tax breaks to certain homeowners trading up.
Click here for more...PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust, a mortgage vulture fund created by a former Countrywide executive to profit from the mortgage crisis, posted a $730,000 loss for the period ending Sept. 30.
Click here for more...Driven by charges and adjustment expenses in its domestic mortgage insurance business, The PMI Group Inc., Walnut Creek, Calif., posted a net loss of $93 million for the third quarter, a marked improvement over the same period last year when it lost $229 million.
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Freddie Mac had credit-related expenses of $7.5 billion for the third quarter, which was the leading driver of its $6.3 billion net loss to common stockholders.
Click here for more...Fannie Mae posted yet another stunning loss in the third quarter, $18.8 billion, noting that it now owns or guarantees close to $200 billion in nonperforming assets.
Click here for more...Ohio's attorney general is suing American Home Mortgage Servicing — a business controlled by vulture fund investor Wilbur Ross — accusing the company of what the state calls "incompetent and inadequate customer service."
Click here for more...The Department of Housing and Urban Development's Mortgagee Review Board is imposing civil money penalties totaling $27,000 on two Federal Housing Administration-approved lenders in Wisconsin and Connecticut for a variety of violations of FHA lending and marketing standards.
Click here for more...Fannie Mae has rolled out a new program under which it will offer market-rate leases for terms of up to a year to troubled borrowers who turn over the deeds to their homes.
Click here for more...Apartment Investment & Management Co. has decided to focus on reducing refunding risk by accelerating refinancing of property loans maturing prior to 2012, based on the results of its recently released third-quarter activity.
Click here for more...Edward William Farley, a former mortgage broker from Georgia, pleaded guilty in federal district court to charges stemming from a mortgage fraud scheme and a related real estate investment Ponzi scam involving more than 150 victims.
Click here for more...Video of the Day
| 3rd Quarter results are showing a balanced housing market in Rhode Island. |
Mortgage Video Library
National Mortgage News presents Mortgage Focus, a video library of hot topics addressed by mortgage industry experts. Topics include servicing, government mortgage plans, refis, loan mods, technology, REO and more.
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A Shift in Thinking
Mortgage Technology Magazine editor Anthony Garritano points out that developments in the industry have prompted lenders to look much more closely at things like electronic disclosures.
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Other Voices
This story is from our sister publication, American Banker
VIEWPOINT: Commercial Lending Needs A New Process
We have all watched hopefully as banks, government and technology providers scraped to put emergency plans and actions into place that would help handle the unprecedented levels of residential loan defaults and foreclosures. Some efforts seem to be working, while others are well intended, but fall short.
One lesson that should be taken from the cascade of residential defaults and foreclosures is how to best prepare commercial lenders for the increase in defaults that is destined in the near future. Most commercial loans made by banks have a five-to-10-year maturity period, placing many of them [that were approved during more lenient underwriting times] up for renewal very soon. Commercial loans have the potential to cause an even bigger problem than residential if they are not handled properly. To put this in perspective, consider that the average consumer loan may be approximately $200,000, while the average commercial loan is about $10 million.
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Michael Hammond looks at technological innovations in the industry and how they fit in with organization and process orchestration demands.


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Robert Story, chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association.
