Tag Archives: FHFA

The industry has long been awaiting a replacement for the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC). On Friday, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued new Appraiser Independence Requirements to supplant the controversial HVCC, but both GSEs say the new appraiser rules, effective immediately, ""make no significant changes to core principles of the HVCC."" Fannie and Freddie say they will continue to review the appraisal rules to address issues relating to conflicts of interests and fee disclosure by appraisal management companies.

All the news of flawed, perhaps fraudulent, foreclosure paperwork has many worried that housing's feeble recovery could quickly derail. A number of large lenders have frozen foreclosure actions and REO sales, but there are several major names that are standing by initial claims that their foreclosure affidavits are legitimate. Wells Fargo says its process is ""sound"" despite a newly uncovered deposition by a self-proclaimed robo-signer and former employee. Citigroup and PHH Mortgage also say they have no reason to stop foreclosures in process.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has issued a new policy that outlines specific steps Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac servicers should take to identify and correct deficiencies in foreclosure paperwork. Evidence of servicing staff cutting corners to process foreclosures quickly has lawmakers, consumer advocates, and the entire general public calling for an immediate moratorium on foreclosures. But FHFA says bringing the process to a complete halt is not the answer.

One of the nation's foremost banking regulators has issued a directive to large mortgage servicers, ordering them to reassess their procedures for foreclosing on defaulted borrowers. John Walsh, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) told lawmakers that he contacted seven institutions his agency supervises, after several large lenders announced a halt on foreclosures in states where filings might contain erroneous paperwork and preparers may have broken the law in their haste to process large volumes of cases.

Fannie Mae has enhanced its EarlyCheck technology service to help lenders identify eligibility or data issues with loans they plan on selling to the GSE in order to minimize the risk of repurchases. With EarlyCheck, lenders now have access to Fannie Mae delivery data checks at any point in the business process, allowing them to spot and correct potential underwriting errors earlier in the process - from prior to closing through to the pre-delivery stage.

Banks that sold bad mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a contractual obligation to buy the loans back, according to their regulator. But many of the nation's largest institutions aren't living up to their end of that commitment. The director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency says that as of the end of the second quarter, Fannie Mae had $4.7 billion in outstanding repurchase requests, and Freddie Mac had $6.4 billion -- more than a third of which have been outstanding for more than 90 days.

Fannie Mae says it is working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to develop and adopt new appraiser independence requirements that will replace the controversial Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) enacted by the GSEs in May of last year. Until the revised requirements are released, the existing HVCC provisions are still in effect. Fannie Mae says it expects the new appraisal rules to be issued by October 21, but that they will be ""substantially similar"" to HVCC.

Oklahoma City's a la mode recently announced that Veros Real Estate Solutions has integrated their VeroSELECT and Valuation Risk Management products with the company's Mercury Network vendor management platform. The integration connects Veros' platform clients with one of the industry's largest networks of real estate appraisers and appraisal management companies, and provides electronic appraisal submission in full compliance with the GSE's Uniform Mortgage Data Program (UMDP) requirements.

The debate over what's next for the government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has begun. Last month, the Treasury invited a wide range of industry stakeholders to a summit in Washington to provide some guidance on the administration's proposal for GSE reform. The general consensus there was that the GSEs play too big a role in the housing market to make an abrupt exodus. A large group of House Republicans, though, don't share that view.

Nearly 31,000 borrowers with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans forfeited their homes through a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure during the second quarter of this year. The figure represents a 27 percent increase over the previous three-month period. The GSEs also reported that their volume of permanent modifications under the administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) increased 65 percent, but at the same time, foreclosure starts and foreclosure sales were also up by double digits.