Many years ago, it was a joke in Britain to say that, “the War Office was always preparing for the last war.” To their credit, regulators now often try to consider the future, rightly or wrongly. Last week the Comptroller of the Currency’s Thomas Curry confirmed that the OCC will begin considering applications from Fintech companies to become special purpose national banks, saying that the OCC will charter “financial technology companies that offer bank products and services and meet our high standards and chartering requirements.” The move opens the door to the more than 4,000 fintech companies to get a special purpose national bank charter, but would not allow such entities to accept FDIC insured deposits without separate approval. The OCC simultaneously released a
white paper on issues addressing the conditions on extending national bank
charters to Fintech companies.
Vendors have been honing their
offerings, making things more cost efficient given the perceived lower volumes
in early 2017. Let's take a random sampling to see what they've been up to.
Lendsnap will be doing a live demo
of its unique platform at the Digital Mortgage Conference in San Francisco this
Thursday afternoon. Lendsnap will be on stage showing a live presentation of
its account aggregation technology that retrieves borrower documentation during
mortgage application (W2s, pay stubs, bank statements, and tax returns).
Management will showcase their new borrower experience (UX) and have other
updates to discuss with interested lenders. "As the only service
to automatically gather authentic qualifying documents (not just VODs),
Lendsnap offers account aggregation technology that fits how you originate and
enhances your portfolio liquidity. The Lendsnap solution has passed the
rigorous SOC I Type II auditing process for 2016. Lendsnap is live with lenders
across the nation; please contact Mike Romano to
learn more.
Bradford
Technologies "has been dedicated to
helping the appraisal industry move from form filling to more meaningful data
analysis. Its new mobile inspection app for appraisers - Inspect-a-Lot, is
centered on collecting only pertinent property data and not filling out forms in
the field, as has been the traditional approach. Appraisers can focus on the
data that affects value and needs to be analyzed as well as speed up the
inspection process by removing the clumsy forms interface. If you would like to
try out the app, you can download 'Inspect-a-Lot' from the Apple App Store. It
only runs on iPads now, no iPhones or Androids."
DocMagic,
Inc. announced that it has successfully completed the mortgage industry's
first comprehensive eClosing in Massachusetts, which
included both lender and closing/settlement agent documentation, for radius
financial group, Inc. DocMagic's Total eClose solution is a
single-source platform that contains all the components needed to facilitate a
completely paperless digital closing. Paramount to achieving the
end-to-end eClosing was eNotarization services provided by strategic partner
World Wide Notary (WWN). Once the eClosing process begins, documents
requiring notary acknowledgment are automatically grouped by the system and
electronically executed in the presence of the notary.
EssentIQ from Essent Guaranty, Inc is a great tool to help you turn
millennials and other first-time homebuyers into homeowners. Its
new enhancements include streamlined navigation to personalized Client Summary
PDF Reports.
Indecomm
Global Services and LendingQB announced a technology and
integration partnership. The partnership provides mutual clients seamless
access to Indecomm's
IncomeGenius, a groundbreaking tax return
analysis platform, along with LendingQB's credit underwriting, pricing,
compliance, and other services. IncomeGenius's Optical Character Reader (OCR)
driven platform adds certainty and simplicity to the challenge of self-employed
borrower calculations. The web based integration of documents and data from
LendingQB to IncomeGenius is an effective way for clients to improve their
underwriting process. For more information contact Indecomm VP of Sales Linda
Bomar.
DataVerify announced the adoption
of its DRIVE platform by American
Pacific Mortgage Corporation (APM). "The DRIVE platform is a single-source,
proprietary enterprise-wide application that can be tailored to meet specific
risk conditions for market requirements. DRIVE automates manual underwriting
processes and applies the rigors of a forensic mortgage loan review to assist
users with avoiding loan quality issues."
Comergence announced its newest
client Sagamore
Home Mortgage. "The new partnership
will facilitate Sagamore's wholesale channel for third party originator due
diligence and oversight. This alliance will allow Sagamore to concentrate
on broker recruitment strategies guided by powerful data intelligence
accessible in the platform including; accurate license data and loan production
volumes."
No one has a crystal ball, and
can accurately, consistently predict the future. "Pending" Home Sales,
"Existing" Home Sales, and "New" Home Sales - take your pick. They all show
something slightly different, and economists have their favorites. Housing and
jobs play critical roles in the United States economy, thus the abundance of
various statistics for each one.
Analysts are always looking
for scraps of information to give them a picture of what's ahead. One tool that
some economists watch is Pending
Home Sales. It is an index created by the National
Association of Realtors (NAR) that tracks homes sales in which a contract is
signed but the sale has not yet closed. What have the numbers been showing us
lately?
In July we learned that Pending
Home sales rose 0.2% the prior month.
Tight inventory remained a problem, and the increase was mainly due to the
Northeast which doesn't have the inventory problem seen on the West Coast.
Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist noted, "With only the Northeast region
having an adequate supply of homes for sale, the reoccurring dilemma of
strained supply causing a run-up in home prices continues to play out in
several markets, leading to the last two months reflecting a slight, early
summer cooldown after a very active spring," he said. "Unfortunately
for prospective buyers trying to take advantage of exceptionally low mortgage
rates, housing inventory at the end of last month was down almost 6 percent
from a year ago,1 and home prices are showing little evidence of slowing to a
healthier pace that more closely mirrors wage and income growth."
The following month Pending
Home Sales dropped 2.4% in August, per
the NAR. Suffering supply levels had
taken the wind out of the momentum the housing market experienced earlier this
year. "Contract activity slackened throughout the country in August except
for in the Northeast, where higher inventory totals are giving home shoppers
greater options and better success signing a contract," Yun said. "In
most other areas, an increased number of prospective buyers appear to be either
wavering at the steeper home prices pushed up by inventory shortages or
disheartened by the competition for the miniscule number of affordable
listings."
But the summer
housing market did not cool down after summer.
Housing inventory declined annually for 15
consecutive months, and properties closed 11 days quicker than August last
year, according to the Pending Home sales report by NAR. Inventory also
remains down as less than 450,000 new listings came on the market in September,
while the median home price rose 9% from last year to $250,000, a new high for
the month.
Which brings us to October
where Pending
Home Sales were +0.1%. With last month's small increase,
the index is now 1.8% higher than last October. Overall, things are pretty
good!
And of course, a good chunk of
those are FHA & VA loans, especially for first-time home buyers with
limited down payment funds. Any changes to FHA & VA? You bet there are -
they don't stop.
FHA's Mortgagee
Letter 2016-20, 2017 Nationwide Forward Mortgage
Limits, provides the maximum mortgage limits for FHA-insured Title II
forward mortgages. Because
of the change to the national median home price this year that increased the
Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) limits, FHA's
"floor" and "ceiling" loan limits will increase for calendar year 2017 to
$275,665 and $636,150, respectively, for a one-unit property asreferenced
in Section II.A.2.a.ii of the Single
Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1. Mortgagees may view this list on
the Maximum
Mortgage Limits web page. FHA forward mortgage limits are available by
MSA and county, or by downloading
a complete listing. The new loan limits are
effective for case numbers assigned on or after January 1, 2017, and remain
effective through December 31, 2017.
FHA published Mortgagee
Letter 2016-22, Extension of Implementation Date of Selected
Sections of Handbook 4000.1,
which extends from December 1, 2016, until March 1, 2017, the implementation date of certain
parts of Section III.A.2 in the Single
Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1 (SF Handbook). The
implementation date change outlined in this Mortgagee Letter is effective
immediately.
FHA published Mortgagee
Letter 2016-18, Mortgagee Use of Professional
Employer Organizations, which clarifies when mortgagees may engage in
contractual arrangements with professional employer organizations and similar
entities for human resources services. Removing this perceived barrier through
policy revisions allows mortgagees to take advantage of process efficiencies
commonly used in business practices, while reinforcing FHA's continuing
objective of making it easier to do business with FHA. The guidance is
effective immediately.
Ginnie
Mae is making available the
Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) Multifamily Loan Level Disclosure Layout,
version 2.0, for disclosure of Monthly Multifamily Loan-Level information.
Read First Community Mortgage's Wholesale
Product and Pricing Bulletin 2016-18 GUIDELINE REMINDER for
important information regarding streamline loans.
Chase
Correspondent has suspended its FHA and
VA 10 Year Fixed product line(s). Thus, these products will no longer be
offered in the Optimal Blue system, but will be available for 30 days to
secondary users.
Impac Mortgage is advertising a limited time offer. It will underwrite FHA and
VA loans with FICO scores between 600-640 for just $99.
Land
Home Financial Services began charging a new
Admin Fee effective with Forward Locks or the Loan Estimate (LE) dated on or
after Thursday, December 1. Both
the state of CA & HI will increase to $995. The admin fee for other states
will be $895. There will be no admin fee changes to the NHF Sapphire (FHA/VA/USDA), FHA
Stream and VA transactions.
Effective immediately, Mortgage Solutions Financial is requiring any VA IRRRL and USDA
Streamline transactions with first payment dates on and after February 1, 2017
to meet the new Ginnie
Mae pooling requirements.
Pursuant to the "Notice of
Lender Alert: Seasoning requirement on VA IRRRL Loan Program" released on
October 25th, 2016, Sun West
Mortgage Company, Inc. (SWMC) provided
an update and a reminder in regards to the mortgage seasoning requirement for
VA IRRRL loan program.
M&T issued a reminder that a
VA IRRL Comparison Statement Lender Certification is required on all VA IRRL
transactions, and must be signed by the Veteran and the VA Underwriter no later
than closing. Although VA does not publish a formal version of the form, it
does provide a link in the VA Lender's Handbook to a recommend a draft which
lender may copy and paste onto their own letterhead. M&T also offers Form
2440 VA IRRL Comparison Statement and QM Affirmation for lender use available
on MEME.
Rates?
Up some, down some, and Monday was up some - mostly due to the ISM
Non-Manufacturing Index rising to a 13-month high for November. Three regional
Fed presidents made public remarks that a December 14 rate hike is a virtual
guarantee - no surprise there. What is also not a surprise is traders reporting
that volume was light. Are there any pipelines left to sell? What will pipelines look like after
the end of December when the pre-election loans fund? Conjecture aside, by the end of the
day Monday rates were pretty much unchanged from Friday afternoon and the
10-year ended the day yielding 2.39%.
Today
we've had a revision to Q3
Productivity and Unit Labor Costs (3.1% and +.7%) and the October Trade Balance
($42.6 billion deficit); coming up are October Factory Orders (10AM ET). The 10-year is at 2.39% and agency MBS prices are
roughly unchanged versus Monday afternoon.
Jobs and Announcements
In job news, a national lender is looking for a talented National Sales Manager to buildout and lead a dynamic sale team in its effort to substantially grow its emerging banker/ mini-correspondent business channel. The National Sales Manager will work closely with the marketing, credit, and senior management teams to set sales strategy and execution for profitable business growth and development. Please send confidential inquiries and resumes to me; please excuse any delays in response due to travel.
For broker's products, "As you strategize for 2017, join the exclusive group of originators that offer innovative QM and Non-QM portfolio programs for loans as high as $1.5 million, by utilizing the Lakeview Wholesaleteam. We offer a full suite of programs designed to help you close borrowers that do not meet traditional agency or jumbo guidelines. Breathe new life into deals and create new business referral sources that your competition can't reach. Inquire today, and become an approved client. Visit LakeviewWholesale.com for additional information or call 85-LAKEVIEW today."
Download your complimentary copy of XINNIX's white paper, "Profile of Today's New Originator." Featured in Mortgage Banking Magazine, this white paper is based off a demographic and psychographic survey of 800 XINNIX alums of the new Loan Officer program, ORIGINATOR. Use this white paper to find your next rookie Loan Officers today!
Congrats to Ben Carson, Trump's nominee for HUD. Before anyone starts celebrating, here's what one person has to say that's worth a skim. Some would say its humorous.