New Broker Product, Vendor News Incl. eClosing, Pending Home Sales Primer; FHA, VA, & Ginnie Changes

 

By rchrisman@robchrisman.com

Congrats to Ben Carson, Trump's nominee for HUD. Before anyone starts celebrating, here's what one person has to say that's worth a skim. Some would say its humorous.

 Vendors have been honing their offerings, making things more cost efficient given the perceived lower volumes in early 2017. Let's take a random sampling to see what they've been up to.

 Lendsnap will be doing a live demo of its unique platform at the Digital Mortgage Conference in San Francisco this Thursday afternoon. Lendsnap will be on stage showing a live presentation of its account aggregation technology that retrieves borrower documentation during mortgage application (W2s, pay stubs, bank statements, and tax returns). Management will showcase their new borrower experience (UX) and have other updates to discuss with interested

lenders. "As the only service to automatically gather authentic qualifying documents (not just VODs), Lendsnap offers account aggregation technology that fits how you originate and enhances your portfolio liquidity. The Lendsnap solution has passed the rigorous SOC I Type II auditing process for 2016. Lendsnap is live with lenders across the nation; please contact Mike Romano to learn more.

 Bradford Technologies "has been dedicated to helping the appraisal industry move from form filling to more meaningful data analysis. Its new mobile inspection app for appraisers - Inspect-a-Lot, is centered on collecting only pertinent property data and not filling out forms in the field, as has been the traditional approach. Appraisers can focus on the data that affects value and needs to be analyzed as well as speed up the inspection process by removing the clumsy forms interface. If you would like to try out the app, you can download 'Inspect-a-Lot' from the Apple App Store. It only runs on iPads now, no iPhones or Androids."

No one has a crystal ball, and can accurately, consistently predict the future. "Pending" Home Sales, "Existing" Home Sales, and "New" Home Sales - take your pick. They all show something slightly different, and economists have their favorites. Housing and jobs play critical roles in the United States economy, thus the abundance of various statistics for each one.

 Analysts are always looking for scraps of information to give them a picture of what's ahead. One tool that some economists watch is Pending Home Sales. It is an index created by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) that tracks homes sales in which a contract is signed but the sale has not yet closed. What have the numbers been showing us lately?

 In July we learned that Pending Home sales rose 0.2% the prior month. Tight inventory remained a problem, and the increase was mainly due to the Northeast which doesn't have the inventory problem seen on the West Coast. Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist noted, "With only the Northeast region having an adequate supply of homes for sale, the reoccurring dilemma of strained supply causing a run-up in home prices continues to play out in several markets, leading to the last two months reflecting a slight, early summer cooldown after a very active spring," he said. "Unfortunately for prospective buyers trying to take advantage of exceptionally low mortgage rates, housing inventory at the end of last month was down almost 6 percent from a year ago,1 and home prices are showing little evidence of slowing to a healthier pace that more closely mirrors wage and income growth."

 The following month Pending Home Sales dropped 2.4% in August, per the NAR. Suffering supply levels had taken the wind out of the momentum the housing market experienced earlier this year. "Contract activity slackened throughout the country in August except for in the Northeast, where higher inventory totals are giving home shoppers greater options and better success signing a contract," Yun said. "In most other areas, an increased number of prospective buyers appear to be either wavering at the steeper home prices pushed up by inventory shortages or disheartened by the competition for the miniscule number of affordable listings."

 But the summer housing market did not cool down after summer.  Housing inventory declined annually for 15 consecutive months, and properties closed 11 days quicker than August last year, according to the Pending Home sales report by NAR.  Inventory also remains down as less than 450,000 new listings came on the market in September, while the median home price rose 9% from last year to $250,000, a new high for the month.

 Which brings us to October where Pending Home Sales were +0.1%. With last month's small increase, the index is now 1.8% higher than last October. Overall, things are pretty good!

 And of course, a good chunk of those are FHA & VA loans, especially for first-time home buyers with limited down payment funds. Any changes to FHA & VA? You bet there are - they don't stop.

 FHA'sMortgagee Letter 2016-20, 2017 Nationwide Forward Mortgage Limits, provides the maximum mortgage limits for FHA-insured Title II forward mortgages. Because of the change to the national median home price this year that increased the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) limits, FHA's "floor" and "ceiling" loan limits will increase for calendar year 2017 to $275,665 and $636,150, respectively, for a one-unit property as referenced in Section II.A.2.a.ii of the Single Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1. Mortgagees may view this list on the Maximum Mortgage Limits web page. FHA forward mortgage limits are available by MSA and county, or by downloading a complete listing. The new loan limits are effective for case numbers assigned on or after January 1, 2017, and remain effective through December 31, 2017.

 Ginnie Mae is making available the Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) Multifamily Loan Level Disclosure Layout, version 2.0, for disclosure of Monthly Multifamily Loan-Level information.

 Chase Correspondent has suspended its FHA and VA 10 Year Fixed product line(s). Thus, these products will no longer be offered in the Optimal Blue system, but will be available for 30 days to secondary users.

 Impac Mortgage is advertising a limited time offer. It will underwrite FHA and VA loans with FICO scores between 600-640 for just $99.

 M&T issued a reminder that a VA IRRL Comparison Statement Lender Certification is required on all VA IRRL transactions, and must be signed by the Veteran and the VA Underwriter no later than closing. Although VA does not publish a formal version of the form, it does provide a link in the VA Lender's Handbook to a recommend a draft which lender may copy and paste onto their own letterhead. M&T also offers Form 2440 VA IRRL Comparison Statement and QM Affirmation for lender use available on MEME.

 Rates? Up some, down some, and Monday was up some - mostly due to the ISM Non-Manufacturing Index rising to a 13-month high for November. Three regional Fed presidents made public remarks that a December 14 rate hike is a virtual guarantee - no surprise there. What is also not a surprise is traders reporting that volume was light. Are there any pipelines left to sell? What will pipelines look like after the end of December when the pre-election loans fund? Conjecture aside, by the end of the day Monday rates were pretty much unchanged from Friday afternoon and the 10-year ended the day yielding 2.39%.

 Today we've had a revision to Q3 Productivity and Unit Labor Costs (3.1% and +.7%) and the October Trade Balance ($42.6 billion deficit); coming up are October Factory Orders (10AM ET). The 10-year is at 2.39% and agency MBS prices are roughly unchanged versus Monday afternoon.