Category Archive: ‘Mortgage Qualifying’

Robo-Appraisals

‘Warranty relief’ means that taxpayers will be on the hook.

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Freddie Mac announced Friday it is making buying a home a better experience for lender and homebuyers – by cutting the appraiser out of the process.

The company is now offering a new product which will cut the appraisal process out of qualified home purchases and refinances. This could save borrowers an estimated $500 in fees and could reduce closing times by as much as 10 days.

The new Automated Collateral Evaluation assesses the need for a traditional appraisal by using proprietary models and utilizing data from multiple listing services and public records as well as the historical home values in order to determine collateral risks.

“By leveraging big data and advanced analytics, as well as 40+ years of historical data, we’re cutting costs and speeding up the closing process for borrowers,” said David Lowman, Freddie Mac executive vice president of single-family business.

“At the same time, we’re providing immediate collateral representation and warranty relief to lenders,” Lowman said. “This is just one example of how we are reimagining the mortgage process to create a better experience for consumers and lenders.”

Lenders can determine if a property is eligible for ACE by submitting the data through Freddie’s loan product advisor. This will then assess credit, capacity and collateral to determine the quality of the loan. Lenders will receive the risk assessment feedback in real time.

ACE will be available for home purchases beginning on September 1, 2017.

Earlier this summer, the company announced it began using this product on qualified refis beginning June 19, 2017.

“When we launched loan advisor suite in July 2016, we set out to give our customers certainty, usability, reliability and efficiency,” said Andy Higginbotham, senior vice president of strategic delivery and operations for Freddie Mac’s single-family business. “ACE is our most recent capability to deliver on that vision.”

Fannie Mae also updated its policy on appraisals this year, and clarified its “existing policy that allows an unlicensed or uncertified appraiser, or an appraiser trainee to complete the property inspection. When the unlicensed or uncertified appraiser or appraiser trainee completes the property inspection, the supervisory appraiser is not required to also inspect the property.”

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Lower Down Payments

It’s hard to lower the down payment on a jumbo loan so any effect on the coastal regions is probably minimal, but this suggests that the stronger buyers are giving way or running out:

Seen at CR and MND:

LINK

An excerpt:

This month, in light of much commentary and speculation on the re-emergence of purchase loans with loan-to-value (LTV) ratios of 97 percent or higher, Black Knight looked at low-down-payment purchase lending trends, gaining some early insight into the performance of these products. As Black Knight Data & Analytics Executive Vice President Ben Graboske explained, in general, low-down-payment purchases are on the rise, but this does not necessarily mean a return to the practices – and risks – of the past.

“Over the past 12 months, approximately 1.5 million borrowers have purchased homes using less-than-10-percent down payments,” said Graboske. “That is close to a seven-year high in low-down-payment purchase volumes. The increase is primarily a function of the overall growth in purchase lending, but, after nearly four consecutive years of declines, low-down-payment loans have ticked upwards in market share over the past 18 months as well. In fact, they now account for nearly 40 percent of all purchase lending.

The bulk of the growth has not been among the various three-percent-or-less down payment programs that have been reintroduced in the last few years, but rather in five-to-nine- percent down payment mortgages. This segment grew at twice the rate of the overall purchase market in late 2016, whereas lending with down payments of less than five percent grew at about the market average.

Read more at http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2017/08/black-knight-mortgage-monitor-low-down.html

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This is good news:

Mortgage-Interest Deduction

The Wall Street Journal published this article about the mortgage-interest deduction having little – or no – impact on the decisions made by homebuyers:

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Of course, the N.A.R., who is beholden to our lobbyists, refuses to consider any changes.  The N.A.R. spent $64,821,111 last year on lobbying – we should quit paying them and spend that money on a rocking real estate portal that benefits all realtors!

Instead, our beleaguered president shuffled up to the podium one more time to vomit the usual beliefs, whether true or not:

The mortgage interest deduction, backed by the influential nationwide lobbying of real-estate agents and home builders warning against precipitous price drops, has survived decades of attacks and is extremely unlikely to vanish this year.

William Brown, president of the National Association of Realtors, said that removing incentives for homeownership, including the mortgage interest deduction, would be a mistake.

“Studies comparing our housing market to that of a foreign country offer an apples-to-oranges scenario that often isn’t constructive,” Mr. Brown said in a statement. “What we know for sure is that home values would suffer if the mortgage interest deduction disappeared, potentially putting homeowners under water.”

Curbing the deduction would give cash buyers an advantage, said Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders.

President Donald Trump has promised to protect the mortgage interest deduction. But even under the plans from Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans, the deduction could lose some of its punch.

With mortgage rates so low, the actual benefit isn’t what it used to be. In addition, wouldn’t rising rents and getting rich quick be bigger motivators than the MID?  Have you noticed that you never hear banks arguing for the MID?

Reduce the Down Payments?

When the day comes that you hear the big banks pushing for reduced-doc loans, you’ll know that the top of the market is near:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bank-of-america-mortgages-idUSKCN18E37J

The head of Bank of America Corp, the United State’s fourth-biggest mortgage lender, said on Thursday banks would be able to supply a bigger share of funding for home purchases if the standard down payment for buyers was cut to 10 percent from 20 percent.

The vast majority of mortgages are underwritten to strict standards set by the U.S. government or quasi-government entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. While down payment requirements can vary, they offer fairly little latitude to lenders that do not want to take all the risk themselves. As a result, many prospective homebuyers who cannot come up with a 20 percent down payment are unable to get a loan.

“Our goal – going back to regulatory reform – is should you move the down payment requirement from 20 percent to 10? It wouldn’t introduce that much risk but would actually help a lot of mortgages get done,” Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan told CNBC in an interview Thursday.

Bank of America was the top U.S. mortgage lender ahead of the 2008 mortgage crisis, causing it to face greater losses, both from defaults and litigation, than any other bank. Under Moynihan, who took the helm at the start of 2010, the bank has tightened lending standards and executives regularly use the motto “responsible growth” in public speeches.

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