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Here are the full details on how the monetization of the $8000 first time homebuyer tax credit will work for FHA loans. You can obtain the full HUD Mortgagee Letter 2009-15 here.
I have been receiving emails and even phone calls asking for the location of the HUD Mortgagee Letter about this all morning so I thought I needed to go ahead and post the details that I have. [Details are now available here]
The comment period for HUD’s rule banning the use of seller assisted down payment programs is still underway but in the meantime, as I noted in my previous post today, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Fran, D-Mass., recently told The Washington Post (registration required) that the House has agreed to accept Senate provisions that ban seller funded downpayment assistance on FHA loans and impose a 12-month moratorium on the charging of risk-based premiums by the FHA. The White House has also dropped opposition to the bill, so it is now on the fast track to passage.
As I spend time reading all the websites that seem to rejoice over reciting every detail of the downfall of the mortgage industry, I see many comments bringing attention to HUD’s efforts to get rid of seller paid down payment assistance. I usually find that these comments are being made by those with no access to any real information other than the misleading and often inaccurate numbers issued by the political appointees at HUD.
On Oct. 30, 2007, I published a post entitled “FHA Mortgage Co-brokering: Watch Out!” in which I warned of potential violations of FHA’s policy regarding payments to non-approved mortgage brokers. HUD made an announcement that day outlining their policy, but it was not issued in the form of an official Mortgagee Letter and it did not clearly identify that the policy applied to any fee paid by the borrower and not just payments made through yield spread premium.
In response to my post “Warning: Why HUD May Stop Your Loan From Closing“, HUD has now waived their anti-flipping rule in certain circumstances. (Just kidding about them responding to my post, but they have taken action.)
One of the most touching experiences loan officers go through when we conduct marketing campaigns seeking FHA mortgage prospects are the borrowers who call us wanting to buy a home for their family but they just have too much bad credit to overcome in order to qualify for even an FHA loan. Often they have a bankruptcy.
HUD continues to use higher default rates associated with loans using DPA as their rationale for killing off the non-profit down payment assistance programs. However, you can’t use HUD’s raw statistics to say DPA causes a higher foreclosure rate, only to show that DPA is associated with a higher foreclosure rate. The reason is that these raw figures aren’t adjusted to account for other factors such as credit, debt ratio, time on the job, local economic conditions etc.