It’s the start of a new fiscal year in Washington, and for the FHA it’s been a great time to be in the mortgage insurance business.

The latest figures from HUD show that FHA applications had an annual run rate of 1,285,800 inquiries in the first 15 days in October. This is up 74.6% when compared with a read more

It’s just a thought, but with the subprime market fairly comatose and a lot of loan officers looking for a few extra dollars, do you think it may be possible that some folks are trying to sell FHA loans without proper authorization or for too much money?

I wonder about this because the FHA has read more

A reader offers a short comment regarding lender practices and in the process raises a number of basic questions:

“How can a lender predict if the borrower will start buying over their means…every American does this!”

Nope, every American does not borrow beyond their means. read more

Over on Lenderama, columnist Gina Gardner says that if borrowers feel abused by lenders they have significant opportunities to obtain relief.

“If lenders misrepresent a product,” says Garner, “the borrowers have recourse already. And they’d be exercising it if they were in fact defrauded.”

Let’s see: read more

Prof. Samuel D. Bornstein has provided an interesting post regarding lenders, liability and financial literacy. This is a post which deserves more than a short response, so first allow me to re-post the professor’s comment before addressing the issues he raises.

“Congress,” says the professor, “is read more

HUD has decided that will delay it’s new anti-charity rule for two prominent down-payment assistance organizations.

The downpayment assistance ban goes into effect for third-party charities as of October 31st. There are two exceptions, however:

*The Nehemiah Corporation of America, due to a previous Settlement Agreement and read more

On the mortgage reform front, Rep. Bradley Miller (D-NC) has introduced H.R. 3915.

This is a bill which would — oh my — actually make lenders responsible to borrowers for the loans they sell. Indeed, a lender could get read more

It’s always great to dress up stuff by creating new and innovative names.

Instead of firing people, we “downsize” companies. There, doesn’t that sound better?

One of our commentators, says that many borrowers have been helped by affordability products.

Let’s see. Could there be read more

There’s a lot of talk that fraud is at the heart of the mortgage meltdown. I think this is likely true to a great extent, but I am uncertain whether to blame borrowers, loan officers or underwriters.

Writing on the well-respected blog at EconLog.Orgread more

Countrywide has announced a $16 billion “Home Preservation Program” that it says will “benefit more than 80,000 borrowers.”

Under intense pressure, in part because it’s the largest mortgage lender in the country, Countrywide says it will modify “up to” $16 billion read more

I generally like to get stuff in the mail. I like some catalogs and coupons — and I especially like checks from clients.

But what I don’t like are the ads from mortgage companies telling me to refinance to a “lower” rate. If you look carefully at such ads you will see that they are read more

With many areas of the country showing stalled and declining real estate markets, can borrowers in such communities still get FHA loans?

You bet. Curiously, the FHA addressed the issue of financing in down markets in a September letter to lenders. What’s most interesting about the guidelines from HUD is what they have to say read more

As reported a few days ago, the FHA loan limit will remain the same in 2008 unless some form of FHA modernization passes in Washington.

This is a matter of some griping because the FHA program has little value in the nation’s more expensive metro areas such as read more

The FHA continues to show strong demand even as much of the mortgage marketplace is in disarray.

For the fiscal year which ended September 30th, HUD reports that it received 768,770 FHA applications under the Single Family Programs. Of this total, 60,081 applications covered proposed construction and 708,689 existing home transactions.

From this application volume, FHA endorsed 424,779 forward read more

I came across a really good explanation of prepayment penalties by Morgan Brown, a California mortgage lender who operates BlownMortgage.com.

For FHA borrowers prepayment penalties are not an issue — they’re not allowed. But in the untamed private sector, you can pay big money when lenders slip read more