Category Archives: Mortgage News

Information about trends in mortgage lending, new types of loans, refinancing, interest rates, and more.

FHA, Mortgages, Attorneys, and Title Abstracts

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This strikes me as so unreasonably funny, that I had to share this TRUE story with you all… I am never as amazed as when dealing with lawyers and government bureaucrats… but here goes… enjoy!!!


Part of rebuilding New Orleans (after Katrina) often caused residents to be challenged with the task of tracing titles to their homes… back potentially hundreds of years. With a community rich with history stretching back over two centuries, houses have been passed along through generations of family, sometimes making it quite difficult to establish ownership. Here’s a great letter an attorney wrote to the FHA on behalf of a client:

You have to love this lawyer ……..

A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client.. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove a satisfactory title to a parcel of property being offered as collateral. It took the lawyer three months to track down the full title to the property which dated back to 1803. After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply.

(Actual reply from FHA):

“Upon review of your letter adjoining your client’s loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin.”

Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows:

(Actual response):

“Your letter regarding title in Case No.189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 206 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased by the United States from France , in 1803 the year of origin identified in our application.  For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France , which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain . The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Queen Isabella. The good Queen Isabella, being a pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus ‘s expedition…Now the Pope, as I’m sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana . God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it, and the FHA. I hope you find God’s original claim to be satisfactory.

Now, may we have our damn loan?”

The loan was immediately approved.

Closing Attorney Commits Mortgage Fraud

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Everybody sit down to read this one. You are going to be surprised. It has come to my attention that a local (Rhode Island) real estate attorney has been charged with mortgage fraud, in a large number of instances. What he did was this: for closings he did, he accepted the mortgage deposit from the buyers lender, and filed the proper documents with the town. In those documents, he also cleared the previous liens on the properties. All good so far, right?

What he did next will knock your socks off.

The guy then intentionally failed to pay of the previous liens, instead using the monies from the transaction to pay the previous mortgages monthly, as if the property had never been sold! Do you get that? He filed the documents that said that the previous lien holder had been cleared, and added the new lien(s) to the property. He then never paid off the previous liens, and instead PAID THE MONTHLY PAYMENTS. He never informed the seller’s lien holders that the property had been sold. So for each of these properties, there were two sets of lien holders, the previous owners mortgage holders, and the current owners mortgage holders, although he did cancel the previous ones at the town hall. So in effect, he stole the difference between the sale price and what had to be paid to the seller, if anything.

Of course, this has now come back to bite this guy, with the Sheriff showing up at his office and arresting him, charging mortgage fraud. This was only discovered because one of the properties he did this on was resold recently, and the lien holder from the previous seller was the same as the one financing the purchase to this second buyer of that property.

Are you amazed at this guy yet?

People, not only should you choose your Realtor carefully, but you should also choose the closing attorney just as carefully… I am not sure how one could know that this had been done since the town hall records would show only your current lien holders. Anyone have any ideas on this?

Sellers, be sure to check with your mortgage company to ensure that your loan has been cleared after the sale of your property. In instances like this, you are still on record for owing the money on your debt. You may of course discover this if you go to buy another house, but this guy got away with this for several years.

Now he will go to jail, very likely.

NAR: Best tool to keep housing moving is the tax credit

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WASHINGTON – Oct. 8, 2009 – The best tool for sustaining the still-fragile housing market is the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit, and it’s essential that Congress extend the credit into 2010, the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) testified at a hearing of the U.S. House Small Business Committee yesterday. The tax credit currently expires Nov. 30, 2009.

NAR Regional Vice President Joseph L. Canfora also told the panel that a major stumbling block for consumers has been the implementation of appraisal processes spurred by the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC), which is causing delays in closings. That delay, Canfora said, led to artificially low existing-home sales numbers for August because consumers cancelled sales.

“The credit is working,” Canfora said, pointing out that 355,000 to 400,000 transactions directly attributable to the credit made a significant dent in the housing inventory and will help to stabilize home prices. In addition, the credit has provided a huge indirect benefit to local governments, shoring up property tax bases in particularly hard-hit areas.

Further, NAR has estimated that every home purchase pumps into the recovering economy about $63,000 – the equivalent of one new job added to the employment figures.

But, Canfora said, the threat of more foreclosures coming to the market caused by mortgage rate resets, job losses, and by lenders’ unburdening themselves of additional properties to take advantage of today’s more stabilized prices could disrupt the fragile recovery.

In a “normal” market, optimal housing inventory is about six to seven months, he said. When the tax credit was enacted in February, inventory was 9.1 months. Because of the spurt in homes sales since then due to the tax credit, inventory declined to 8.2 months in August, closer to “normal” than at any time since 2007.

“The more robust the credit and the greater its duration, the greater the chance that the housing market can perform its traditional role of helping the economy move out of a recession,” Canfora said.

“But problems arising from the implementation of the HVCC may reverse the market’s positive momentum at a time when the real estate industry is just starting to show signs of a rebound in many markets,” Canfora added. According to an NAR survey of its members, approximately 40 percent of Realtors report losing at least one sale since May 1 because of appraisal problems due to the HVCC rules. Twenty percent say they have lost more than one sale.

The culprit, Canfora said, was that appraisal management companies, which have gained prominence because of the HVCC, have assigned appraisers to areas where they lack geographic competence. That has resulted in unreliable appraisals. It’s not uncommon that second and third appraisals have to be done to ascertain fair market value. Appraisal fees have also risen and are being passed on to consumers.

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have issued guidance on appraisals, but NAR is calling upon the mortgage giants and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to issue consolidated guidance codified and incorporated into existing policy so that information on appraisals is available to the real estate industry.

FHA Commissioner David H. Stevens has asked FHA staff to explore that recommendation with Fannie and Freddie. Last month, Stevens reaffirmed FHA appraisal policy, taking into consideration the unintended consequences that have burdened Fannie and Freddie, and issued two Mortgagee Letters focusing on appraisal changes. The policy reaffirms appraiser independence and geographic competence.

The FHA announcement also included timely steps to protect taxpayers: implementing credit policy changes to enhance risk management; hiring a chief risk officer for the first time in the agency’s history; and shifting responsibility for mortgage brokers away from taxpayers to the lenders who use mortgage brokers.

Canfora told the committee that FHA has performed remarkably well through the housing crisis compared to Fannie and Freddie. “That’s because FHA has never strayed from the sound underwriting and appropriate appraisals that have traditionally backed up their loans. The reason the FHA capital reserve ratio fell below 2 percent had nothing to do with FHA’s current business activities. It is simply a reflection of falling housing values in their portfolio.”

Canfora cited an FHA announcement that a 2009 audit will show that even if FHA does nothing, the cap reserves are expected to rise back to that required level within a few years.

A third of loan applications are being denied!

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Report: 1 in 3 loan applications denied

WASHINGTON – Oct. 1, 2009 – Nearly one in three borrowers who applied for a mortgage last year was denied as lenders kept their standards tight as the mortgage crisis accelerated, the government reported Wednesday.

In its annual look at mortgage practices among lending institutions, Federal Reserve said the denial rate for all home loans was about 32 percent last year – about the same as in 2007, but up from 29 percent in 2006. The denial rates for blacks and Hispanics were more than twice as high as the rate for white borrowers.

The report highlights massive changes in the lending industry after the housing market bust. Overall loan applications were down by a third from a year earlier, and were half the level in 2006.

Loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration soared to 21 percent of all loans made last year from less than 5 percent in both 2005 and 2006.

For black borrowers, more than half of all loans were FHA-insured, more than triple a year earlier. For Hispanics, that number shot up to 45 percent, more than four times as high as in 2007. That was troubling news for consumer advocates.

“I’m hard-pressed to believe that many of those borrowers couldn’t have been served by the private sector,” said John Taylor, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a consumer group in Washington. “It implies that the industry has shut down in serving this population.”

High-priced loans with rates at least 3 percentage points above the rate for prime loans shrunk to nearly 12 percent of the market from a high of 29 percent in 2006. But that figure mainly reflects unusually low interest rates during the recession, the report said, and understates the disappearance from the market of high-priced subprime loans made to borrowers with poor credit.

Last year, about 17 percent of blacks and 15 percent of Hispanics got high-priced loans, compared with about 7 percent of whites. Even controlling for factors that might widen that discrepancy, there is still a gap of almost 8 percentage points between the number of blacks and whites who got high-cost loans.

The mortgage industry says lenders are not discriminating by race, and are making adjustments based on borrowers’ risk profile – such as their credit score and the size of their down payments.

“You still have a certain degree of risk-based pricing in the market,” said Jay Brinkmann, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s chief economist.

Lenders also scaled back dramatically on the amount of so-called “piggyback” mortgages, in which borrowers used second mortgages to avoid making a 20 percent down payment. Those loans have virtually disappeared from the market: Only 98,000 were made last year, down from 1.3 million annually in 2006.

Mortgage Modification Plan Update

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WASHINGTON – Sept. 10, 2009 – The Obama administration’s $50 billion mortgage relief program is finally picking up speed after a sluggish and disappointing start: Nearly one in five eligible homeowners have been offered help so far.

The “Making Home Affordable” plan was launched with great fanfare in March. As of last month, lenders had sent out more than 571,000 offers to reduce borrowers’ monthly payments, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.

That’s 19 percent of the nearly 3 million U.S. homeowners eligible for a loan modification under the plan, up from 15 percent at the end of July.

“There are signs the plan is working,” said Michael Barr, assistant Treasury Secretary for financial institutions. “But we can do better.”

Of the modifications offered, about 360,000 borrowers, or 12 percent, have signed up for three-month trial modifications, which are supposed to be extended for five years if the homeowners make their payments on time.

To increase pressure on the industry, Waters and other lawmakers threatened to revive a failed proposal, opposed by banking lobbyists, to let bankruptcy judges rewrite the terms of a mortgage.

That change is necessary, consumer groups say, because getting a lender to do so voluntarily is still a time-consuming, bureaucratic nightmare. Many lenders are still scheduling foreclosure sales, and charging borrowers fees for participating in the Obama plan.

“The administration has got to put some teeth in this and really get some consequences for the lenders and servicers who are not cooperating,” said Bonnie Mathias, a board member of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

But mortgage executives say they are racing to implement the program, hiring thousands of workers to handle an unprecedented flood of calls.

“We fully understand the urgency,” Jack Shackett, Bank of America’s head of credit loss prevention, told lawmakers. “We understand that we have a long way to go under very challenging circumstances.”

Bank of America has doubled its number of trial modifications in two months to nearly 60,000. But it still lags its competitors, having enrolled about 7 percent of its 836,000 eligible loans, compared with 25 percent for JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The Treasury Department’s decision to publish those numbers has clearly provided a powerful inventive for many in the industry.

Lenders are “concerned about the report card showing them in a worse light than their peers,” said David Stevens, an assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Nobody wants to be a low performer on that score card.”

Industry executives also say they are planning to work with Obama administration officials on a possible extension of the program to unemployed homeowners. Also under consideration is finding a way to help borrowers with “pick-a-payment” or option ARM loans, which gave borrowers the ability to defer some of their interest payments and add them to the principal.

Treasury says 48 mortgage companies are now involved in the program, up from 38 in July. The companies have requested financial information from almost two-thirds of eligible borrowers and say they are on track to have 500,000 loan modifications in place by Nov. 1.

The program is voluntary, relying on subsidies to encourage mortgage companies to participate. Lenders must agree to reduce the loan payments to 38 percent of a borrower’s monthly pretax income. After that, the government and lender split the cost of bringing the payment down to 31 percent.

Borrowers can receive rates as low as 2 percent for five years.WASHINGTON – Sept. 10, 2009 – The Obama administration’s $50 billion mortgage relief program is finally picking up speed after a sluggish and disappointing start: Nearly early one in five eligible homeowners have been offered help so far. The “Making Home Affordable” plan was launched with great fanfare in March. As of last month, lenders had sent out more than 571,000 offers to reduce borrowers’ monthly payments, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. That’s 19 percent of the nearly 3 million U.S. homeowners eligible for a loan modification under the plan, up from 15 percent at the end of July. “There are signs the plan is working,” said Michael Barr, assistant Treasury Secretary for financial institutions. “But we can do better.” Of the modifications offered, about 360,000 borrowers, or 12 percent, have signed up for three-month trial modifications, which are supposed to be extended for five years if the homeowners make their payments on time. To increase pressure on the industry, Waters and other lawmakers threatened to revive a failed proposal, opposed by banking lobbyists, to let bankruptcy judges rewrite the terms of a mortgage. That change is necessary, consumer groups say, because getting a lender to do so voluntarily is still a time-consuming, bureaucratic nightmare. Many lenders are still scheduling foreclosure sales, and charging borrowers fees for participating in the Obama plan. “The administration has got to put some teeth in this and really get some consequences for the lenders and servicers who are not cooperating,” said Bonnie Mathias, a board member of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. But mortgage executives say they are racing to implement the program, hiring thousands of workers to handle an unprecedented flood of calls. “We fully understand the urgency,” Jack Shackett, Bank of America’s head of credit loss prevention, told lawmakers. “We understand that we have a long way to go under very challenging circumstances.” Bank of America has doubled its number of trial modifications in two months to nearly 60,000. But it still lags its competitors, having enrolled about 7 percent of its 836,000 eligible loans, compared with 25 percent for JPMorgan Chase & Co. The Treasury Department’s decision to publish those numbers has clearly provided a powerful inventive for many in the industry. Lenders are “concerned about the report card showing them in a worse light than their peers,” said David Stevens, an assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Nobody wants to be a low performer on that score card.” Industry executives also say they are planning to work with Obama administration officials on a possible extension of the program to unemployed homeowners. Also under consideration is finding a way to help borrowers with “pick-a-payment” or option ARM loans, which gave borrowers the ability to defer some of their interest payments and add them to the principal. Treasury says 48 mortgage companies are now involved in the program, up from 38 in July. The companies have requested financial information from almost two-thirds of eligible borrowers and say they are on track to have 500,000 loan modifications in place by Nov. 1. The program is voluntary, relying on subsidies to encourage mortgage companies to participate. Lenders must agree to reduce the loan payments to 38 percent of a borrower’s monthly pretax income. After that, the government and lender split the cost of bringing the payment down to 31 percent. Borrowers can receive rates as low as 2 percent for five years.