This time, it’s Freedom Mortgage to the tune of $113 million. Same story, the Department of Justice, under the False Claims Act, brought the action against Freedom for violations in the FHA insurance program resulting in losses sustained by FHA. About a week ago, Freedom agreed to the settlement without admitting liability, but it cost them big bucks just the…
The USDA recently published some guidance relative to how student loans should be treated with respect to calculating a Borrower’s monthly expenses. Also, the GSE’s previously changed their policies on how repayments made on student loans are handled in calculating debt-to-income ratios. In addition, HUD/FHA implemented major changes in the way student loan debt is handled when calculating monthly obligations…
Better late than never. The VA has issued their guidance for the disclosure of allowable fees to veterans for a VA guaranteed loan. VA Circular 26-16-11 (Exhibit A & Exhibit B) outlines how a lender should be disclosing allowable fees and charges and how a lender and seller credit should be reflected on the new Closing Disclosure to offset an…
Another shocking news headline! A new report by Trulia claims that the long-standing mortgage interest tax deduction available to all homeowners is mostly a benefit to white male homeowners (Inequality). Women and minorities are not getting the same benefit. The report goes on to show how a larger percentage of whites own homes (almost 63%), with the percent of those…
Most companies like to boast that they provide great customer service. I once attended a bank’s 5-year planning meeting where the facilitator asked, “How much do you, or can you, charge for your “great” customer service? Everyone went silent. The reality is that every customer expects to receive good service as part of the product and process. You wouldn’t expect to…
The good news is that FHA has amended their policy, which I outlined in an August 2015 blog post. That post, was about the GSE’s underwriting policy with respect to borrowers with outstanding student loan debt and highlighted the proposed HUD/FHA new policy (upon implementation of Handbook 4000.1). The policy in August required lenders to calculate a monthly payment for…
