Got a beef with your mortgage lender? Is your bank unresponsive when you complain that your escrow account is fouled up and making your monthly payments needlessly high?

Did your loan officer bait-and-switch you into a more costly home loan than you were originally promised? Or worse yet: Did your home loan servicer ignore you when you told him you’ve had an unexpected drop in income and needed a modification to avoid missing payments?

If any of these situations sound familiar, here’s a heads-up about the newest and least-publicized source of federal help: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s home mortgage complaint and dispute resolution hotline. [more]

David Stevens, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, and Richard Smith, CEO of Realogy

Housing market experts remain divided over the Obama administration’s proposal yesterday to sell government-owned foreclosed properties and convert them to rentals. The administration’s suggestion would involve teaming up with private-sector partners, who may be willing to purchase pools of similar properties for conversion, in order to clear the foreclosure backlog and meet increasing demand for rental units. Yesterday’s request for information by the government, was primarily aimed at potential investors, the Journal said.
Solutions that rely on investors to clear the overhang of foreclosures have “extraordinary value,” said David Stevens, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, who previously served as the commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration.  [more]

Mortgage Bankers Association President David Stevens switched positions today, advocating for a continuation of higher federal loan limits for another year, CNBC reported.

Earlier this month, the federal government laid out plans to slowly pull out of the mortgage market, by lowering the maximum loan that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA can issue. During the downturn the limit was lifted to $729,750 so that residents of the country’s most expensive housing markets, including New York, could continue to obtain financing even as private lenders were skittish. The government plans on decreasing the maximum to $625,500 Oct. 1. [more]

David Stevens

Federal officials announced a new mortgage plan today targeted at senior citizen homeowners. The new reverse mortgage option is designed for homeowners taking out smaller loans than those offered in the standard federally insured reverse mortgage program. The new reverse mortgage option, known as the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage Saver, was created for homeowners who want to avoid the high cost of starting a standard reverse mortgage, according to David Stevens, commissioner of the FHA. “We have noted concerns that some senior citizens find that our fees are too high for them,” Stevens said. “In response, we created [the new program], which will provide seniors with a reverse mortgage option that significantly lowers costs.” TRD

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Federal Housing Administration officials are contending that congressional moves to increase the minimum required for down payments on FHA-backed loans could set the residential market into another slump, according to the Wall Street Journal. Although critics claim that the FHA program allows risky buyers to make purchases beyond their means, David Stevens, commissioner of the FHA, is warning that increasing the minimum down payment requirement to 5 percent from 3.5 percent could be detrimental to the housing market. “We share the goal of increasing equity in home purchase transactions,” Stevens said, adding that he believes the proposed percentage hike would “adversely impact the housing market recovery.”

Mortgage guarantor Ginnie Mae and the Federal Housing Administration have bumped a Long Island-based lender from a government-insured mortgage program that had allowed it to grant FHA-backed mortgages, while simultaneously denying the company the right to sell mortgage-backed securities. The lender, TopDot Mortgage, reportedly violated federal lending rules on numerous occasions, according to the Center for Public Interity, and had accrued a portfolio of $181.2 million in Ginnie Mae securities before the federal agency took action. Ginnie Mae had allowed TopDot to sell FHA loans in the secondary mortgage market, despite the fact that the lender has been the target of several lawsuits accusing it of misleading borrowers about the terms of its FHA loans. Additionally, TopDot’s FHA loan default rate was found to be more than double that of comparable lenders in the area, hitting about 14.3 percent in the last two years. “This lender demonstrated a pattern of utter disregard for how we do business,” David Stevens, FHA commissioner, said.

Concerns are increasing that the Federal Housing Administration will
need a bailout after taking on a larger role in the mortgage market
this year. An ever larger number of homeowners with FHA backed loans –
which require down payments as low as 3.5 percent — are at risk of
defaulting, and these defaults could push the FHA’s reserves below the
amount Congress requires. The reserve amounts will be revealed in an
annual report to be released Sept. 30. New FHA Commissioner David
Stevens said the agency is not in danger of needing a taxpayer bailout,
but several housing analysts have said a FHA bailout could be necessary
if housing prices continue to fall. Comments

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