There have been some rumblings about a HARP 3.0 (Home Affordable Refinance Program) that could be launched sometime this year, with the hopes of broadening the field of those eligible to receive the loan. Under the current HARP program, the following requirements must be met to take advantage of its benefits:
Compliance is a top concern, of that there is no doubt. Most lenders are adopting strategies that will see them paying more attention to the new rules or bringing in extra help for quality assurance or even outsourcing compliance work to a third party. This issue doesn’t just impact bankers; it’s also a top concern for mortgage brokers.
Topics: Mortgage Compliance, Compliance
The whole point of the Qualified Mortgage was to give the mortgage industry some product it could sell to consumers that carried with it a relatively high probability that it would not come back to haunt the originator in the future. Protection from buyback requests, a safe harbor from future losses, if you will, is what the whole thing is about. Given that, it’s in our best interest to explore the various safe harbors the regulator is building into the QM in order to assess its overall ability to reach that goal.
Topics: Mortgage Compliance, Compliance
In the wake of its acquisition of Mortech, Zillow is added to the exclusive list of industry’s top services.
Mortech, Inc., a Zillow® business that provides mortgage technology software solutions for mortgage bankers and secondary market teams, announced today that parent company Zillow has been listed among the top 50 service providers in the U.S. mortgage lending industry, according to Mortgage Technology magazine. A story that included the list was published in the magazine’s spring edition.
For information on Mortgage Hedging and Secondary Marketing solutions, look here.
[hedge] A securities transaction that reduces the risk on an existing investment position.
An issue circling the mortgage industry for years now is the idea of managing risk or hedging your pipeline. It seems there are a number of interpretations as to what this is and should mean to your pipeline. One idea is to absolutely minimize your risk. Perhaps the easiest way to accomplish this in the mortgage business is to give your potential borrower the option to lock or float at their option. This assumes a couple of things:
1) Your consumer is armed with sufficient information to make an informed decisions about their mortgage
Topics: mortgage hedging