Origination

Federal Housing Administration Commissioner David Stevens urged mortgage bankers to become more engaged in Obama Administration programs designed to stop the bleeding in the housing market and embrace regulatory and legislative changes to boost consumer confidence.

It's unlikely the government will release its grip on the housing market any time soon, the head of Freddie Mac told residential finance executives and vendors.

WASHINGTON—David Stevens has been a busy man during his first 16 months on the job. Under his lead, the FHA has implemented a whirlwind of reforms, including higher net worth requirements for government-approved lenders, steeper downpayments for borrowers with low FICO scores, and a new mortgage insurance premium structure that was approved by Congress. And he’s not done yet.

Mortgage originations could fall dramatically next year by one-third, even as purchase-money lending increases, the Mortgage Bankers Association said at its annual convention in Atlanta.

Some lenders are taking reforms in the Federal Housing Administration credit policies too far, shutting the door on otherwise good candidates for home ownership, FHA Commissioner David Stevens said in Atlanta at the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual convention.

Some large banks sold fewer mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the third quarter, using them to manage interest rate risk and to slow the contraction of loans.

When times are tough, consumers, increasingly, are paying their credit card bills first and worrying about the mortgage later.

Home prices began to sag again in August as 17 of the 20 cities in the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller house price index posted month-to-month declines.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage may be under siege in some quarters, but not at the Mortgage Bankers Association convention in Atlanta, where it was defended as on par with motherhood and apple pie.

The success of the first-ever Small Business Administration 504 first-mortgage pools sold on the secondary market for securitization means it is likely there will be more of these transactions in the future, an executive with one of the participating lenders said.Bank of America and United Midwest Savings Bank were the institutions that assembled the first pools to be sold in a new program authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.