FHA Eyes Premium Calculator

Even though the first major overhaul of the Federal Housing Administration's mortgage insurance program in a decade has a long way to go in a short time, the agency is already thinking about how to implement the proposed changes, officials said Tuesday.If Congress should allow the FHA to switch to risk-based pricing, the agency would like to create a "little premium calculator" as a simple means of determining what the FHA would charge to insure a particular loan, according to Meg Burns, director of the FHA's Office of Single-Family Program Development. The agency also plans to move condominiums into the standard 203(b) program to eliminate the "long, drawn-out" approval process, and to either completely revamp the Title I home improvement loan program or drop it altogether, Ms. Burns told the Mortgage Bankers Association's Government Housing Finance Conference in Washington. She said the plan is to remove condos from a "very onerous, time-consuming" clearance process by allowing lenders to certify condo loans directly based on a streamlined checklist. The envisioned premium calculator would compute the cost of the insurance premium based on the borrower's credit score, the term of the mortgage, whether it has a fixed or adjustable rate, the loan-to-value ratio, and whether it is a purchase-money mortgage or a refi, the FHA official said.