Daily Dose

Many borrowers are unaware of their homebuying power and are underestimating their mortgage eligibility, according to a recent study by Genworth Mortgage Insurance, a unit of Genworth Financial, Inc. The results showed that 66 percent of the 113 lending executives surveyed feel that many borrowers who are eligible for mortgages do not feel that they can realistically purchase a home.

Fannie Mae released an update to their Private Mortgage Insurer Eligibility Requirements (PMIERs) today regarding the treatment of loans with lender-paid mortgage insurance. The PMIERS are scheduled to go into effect on December 31, 2015. Fannie Mae made updates to the PMIERS FAQs section, eligibility requirements, operational performance scorecard, quarterly portfolio and financial supplement, quarterly portfolio loan level dataset, and their selling guide.

Following the lead of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling legalizing same sex marriage nationwide, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has recently announced that it will offer home loans and other benefits to the spouses and children in all same sex veteran marriages. The U.S. Supreme Court announced on June 26, 2015 in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) listed interest rate, underwriting, strategic, compliance, and cybersecurity as the top supervisory concerns in the Semiannual Risk Perspective for Spring 2015 released Tuesday. Based on data that covers risks to banks and federal savings associations through the end of 2014, the report, which focuses on issues that post threats to the safety and soundness of OCC-regulated institutions, noted an overall decline in revenues in profitability for all OCC-supervised institutions. The four main areas of data presented in the report are operating environment, bank condition, key risk issues, and regulatory actions.

Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) requirements, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is obligated to submit an annual report to Congress concerning Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s guarantee fees. According to the FHFA report, the average level of guarantee fees charged has increased since 2009, when the report began. The guarantee fees are now two-and-a-half times their previous level from 2009 to 2014.

Home prices have continued to rise across the country in April 2015 and for the last 12 months at a moderate pace, according to the results from the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released today. The Case Shiller Index, which covers all nine U.S. census divisions, posted a 4.2 percent annual increase in April 2015, compared to a slightly higher 4.3 percent increase in March 2015.

Interthinx, Inc., a subsidiary of First American Financial Corporation and a leading provider of comprehensive risk mitigation solutions for the financial services industry, has released its annual interactive Mortgage Fraud Risk Report, which includes data collected in 2014 from loan applications processed by the Interthinx FraudGUARD system. The report found that the 2014 Annual Mortgage Fraud Risk Index value decreased by 4 percent from 2013 to 100.

Black Knight Financial Services, a provider of integrated technology, data, and analytics solutions that facilitate and automate many of the business processes across the mortgage life cycle Data & Analytics division released its Home Price Index (HPI) today finding that U.S. home prices were up 1 percent for the month of April, rising 4.9 percent on a year-over-year basis.

Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the FHLBanks experienced a substantial increase in their net income for the first quarter. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released the Quarterly Performance Report of the Housing GSEs today analyzing the first quarter earnings and other contributing factors that boosted these GSEs’ incomes.

Mortgage originations have seen tremendous growth this year, according to Equifax's National Consumer Credit Trends Report. The report found that mortgage origination balances reached $466 billion in the first quarter, a 74.4 percent increase from the same time a year ago. First mortgages increased 79.9 percent compared to the first quarter of 2014 to $430 billion, leading this growth spurt. Meanwhile, originations of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) increased 30 percent to $30.9 billion and new home equity installment loans climbed 13.6 percent to $5 billion.