Government

Representatives from HUD and Ginnie Mae convened at the second annual Ginnie Mae Summit Monday to discuss initiatives and programs designed to create a healthy housing market. The company's plans indicate it is changing its policies and procedures as part of an ongoing effort to adapt to changes in the housing industry, preserve the integrity of its mortgage-backed securities (MBS) program, reduce risk, and better manage resources.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) monthly House Price Index picked up 0.1 percent from June to July, coming down after a revised 0.3 percent increase in June. For the 12 months ending in July, FHFA reported house prices were up 4.4 percent. As of the latest index, the national HPI is now 6.4 percent below its peak in April 2007 and is roughly in line with its July 2005 level.

A recurring theme during many of the six labs at the Five Star Conference last week was compliance and how it has changed the mortgage industry in the last few years. Laurie Maggiano, program manager for servicing and secondary markets at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), was on hand to discuss the world of mortgage servicing statutes for the "CFPB's National Servicing Standards—Update Session" section of the conference's Compliance Lab.

The ongoing legal battle between the U.S. government and Bank of America over the sale of soured loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the financial meltdown continued last week as lawyers for the government argued against a motion to throw out a fraud verdict rendered against the bank.

Selim Zherka, a resident of Somers, New York, was arrested by federal agents on Thursday and charged with falsifying information to obtain loans totaling more than $146 million from three banks: North Fork Bank (now Capital One), Sovereign Bank (now Santander), and Signature Bank, according to an announcement from the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP).

Experts gathered in Dallas earlier this week at the annual Five Star Conference and Expo to discuss the most pressing issues facing servicers—and "compliance" was the word of the day.

According to the government's figures, privately owned housing starts last month were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 956,000, marking a 14.4 percent month-over-month drop. July's rate of new homebuilding was revised up to 1.12 million. While apartment construction has led single-family homebuilding in most of this year's previous gains, the opposite was true in August's report: Multifamily starts (five units or more) plunged 31.5 percent in August to an adjusted annual rate of 304,000, while single-family starts were down a more modest 2.4 percent to 643,000.

In a statement released Wednesday following the end of the Federal Open Market Committee's latest meeting, the Fed announced that starting in October, it will dial back its monthly purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities and Treasury securities to a combined pace of $15 billion per month. Barring any significant setback in the economy in the next month, the committee announced it could end its asset purchases at its October meeting.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., Michael Stegman, counselor to the Treasury secretary for housing finance policy, explained that lenders are currently reluctant to make non-agency loans without first knowing how they'll rate on the market. At the same time, credit rating agencies don't rate mortgage pools until they see the actual loan tape.

U.S. Bank has reached a settlement with a housing regulator over allegations the bank discriminated against a Native American couple in denying them a refinance. Under the settlement's terms, U.S. Bank agreed to pay the couple's U.S. Bank credit card balance, amounting to nearly $11,500. The bank also agreed to approve their refinance application at the same interest rate and terms under which they originally applied in May 2013.