Loan Think

“I would never stoop so low as to spy on my competition,” one loan officer said to me recently. Why not? Don’t think for a minute that they don’t know what you are up to.

Does anyone in government feel sorry enough for jumbo borrowers that they would design a HARP program to help these (presumably) high net worth individuals take advantage of a 3.5% fixed-rate mortgage?

I like to set goals. It's a sickness.

Now, the CFPB will step-in and investigate reports of non-compliant mortgage servicing companies, and possibly enforce hefty fines.

Lenders that order appraisals to support mortgage loans may be tempted, as a cost control measure or otherwise, to limit the number of approaches to value that an appraiser uses in performing the appraisal. But those lenders, and their AMCs, should proceed with caution. The uniform appraisal standards, known as USPAP, recognize three main approaches to value: the sales-comparison approach, the cost approach, and the income approach.

Political races bring on all sorts of silly comparisons so why not take a stab at asking this: who would produce a more profitable mortgage banking company: President Obama or Mitt Romney?

In baseball, there are the written rules and the unwritten rules on how to play the game. Many of these unwritten rules are things you don't do on the field, in other words they make up a code of behavior.

It seems clear that changes made to the HARP program late last year have spurred a strong wave of usage that the industry didn’t anticipate. It doesn’t matter, of course: mortgage bankers are now writing new HARP loans left and right and competition is picking up thanks to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac upgrading their AU systems.

Documenting and verifying a borrower’s income is one of the most basic tasks for an underwriter. While this appears to be relatively simple, validating income has become increasingly complex and susceptible to borrower fraud.

You remember the HARP program, don’t you? Originally, the idea was to refinance current but high LTV Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac borrowers into new, lower-rate loans—provided they were current. Home values (and lack of equity) reeked havoc on the concept so Uncle Sam took the LTV girdle off.