Tag Archives: mortgage insurance

Armed, Unarmed or Harmed by Knowledge?

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I posted Armed, Unarmed or Harmed by Knowledge? A Comment on the FHA’s Housing Counseling Pilot Program to SSRN (and to BePress). The abstract reads,

The FHA has requested input on its Homeowners Armed with Knowledge (HAWK) for New Homebuyers pilot program. This comment letter argues that housing counseling is not a proven solution to the problem it is meant to solve, excessive defaults by FHA borrowers. HAWK is a traditional housing counseling program but the scholarly literature casts into doubt the efficacy of such programs. It would be better to take time to research which counseling strategies, if any, are proven to be effective. This is true for the FHA but also for other government agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that have devoted significant resources to unproven financial counseling programs.

This comment was submitted to the FHA in response to its request for input on its Homeowners Armed with Knowledge (HAWK) for New Homebuyers program.

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my take on this topic as the comment is adapted from blog posts that have addressed various financial education topics.

Reiss on Mortgage Insurance Proposal

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Law360 quoted me in FHFA Capital Rules Will Squeeze Older Mortgage Insurers (behind a paywall). It opens,

The Federal Housing Finance Agency on Thursday released proposals that would impose higher capital requirements on private mortgage insurers doing business with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but experts say insurers with bubble-era mortgages in their portfolios may find it tough to meet the new mandates.

The new standards will force mortgage insurers to determine the amount of cash and other liquid assets they retain to cover potential payouts using more of a risk-based formula than they have up to this point, meaning that the riskier the mortgage, the more capital will be required.

Because of that, mortgage insurers that were in business during the housing bubble era and have older loans on their books will be hit harder than insurers that have only post-financial crisis loans on their books, said Paul Hastings LLP partner Kevin Petrasic.

“The older vintage mortgages have more challenging issues than the newer mortgages,” he said.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are barred from backing mortgages where the borrower has contributed less than a 20 percent down payment without getting private mortgage insurance to make up the difference. The insurance on those mortgages absorbs any losses before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do in the case of default, in essence putting private money before taxpayer money.

During the financial crisis, private mortgage insurers paid out billions of dollars on bad mortgages even as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took on over $180 billion in federal bailout money in the fall of 2008, when they were put under the FHFA’s conservatorship.

However, the financial crisis also saw many of the larger mortgage insurers fail under the weight of the huge number of claims they had to cover, contributing to Fannie and Freddie’s collapses.

“The history of the mortgage insurance industry is a history of good profits during good times and catastrophic losses in bad times,” said Brooklyn Law School professor David Reiss. “It seems like what the FHFA is doing is saying we don’t want the taxpayer on the hook during the next period of catastrophic losses.”

That is exactly what the FHFA says it intends with its new regulations, part of a so-called strategic plan to strengthen Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to bring more private money into the mortgage market.

Input on Housing Counseling

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HUD has issued a Notice, Federal Housing Administration (FHA): Homeowners Armed With Knowledge (HAWK) for New Homebuyers (Docket No. FR-5786-N-01).

HAWK is a pilot that will

provide FHA insurance pricing incentives to first-time homebuyers who participate in housing counseling and education that covers how to evaluate housing affordability and mortgage alternatives, to better manage their finances, and to understand the rights and responsibilities of homeownership. The goals of the HAWK for New Homebuyers pilot (HAWK Pilot) are to test and evaluate program designs that meet these objectives:

•To improve the loan performance of participants and reduce claims paid by FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund (MMIF).

• To expand the number of families who improve their budgeting skills and housing decisions through access to HUD-approved housing counseling agency services; and

• To increase access to sustainable home mortgages for homebuyers underserved by the current market. (27896)

I have already noted that HAWK is based upon some pretty sketchy research about the efficacy of housing counseling. The Notice presents additional research (in footnotes 5-8) that supports its goals, but I have to say that it seems cherry picked to me. The notice says, for instance, “some studies show” and “Several major studies have recently noted a correlation . . ..” But the Notice does not seem to contextualize these studies at all. A meta-analysis (see here too) of financial education initiatives is decidedly less optimistic.

It seems that the FHA and the CFPB have gone whole hog on counseling even though the evidence is not there to support such strong support. On the bright side, HAWK is a pilot program and the FHA will evaluate it to see whether it meets its goal of “improving loan performance.” (27903) I am just worried a bit worried though, because the FHA’s materials seem to show an unwarranted bias toward counseling that a review of the relevant literature does not seem to bear out.

The HAWK Notice requests comments by July 14, 2014, so you’d better act fast if you have something to say!

Reiss on Mortgage Insurance Probe, Again

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American Banker also ran a story on the settlement, Lenders Likely Next Target in CFPB Reinsurance Kickback Probe (paywall) that includes an interview with me:

WASHINGTON – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s enforcement actions against four large mortgage insurers are likely just the start of efforts against an alleged widespread mortgage insurance kickback scheme that involves several lenders.

pay day loans now

The agency ordered the firms to stop reinsurance deals with mortgage lenders that were purportedly made in return for getting a larger slice of the mortgage insurance pie. It also said the insurance companies must pay a total of $15.4 million in civil money penalties and undergo additional CFPB monitoring.

Yet the paltry size of the fines – combined with additional investigations and ongoing litigation involving borrowers, insurers and big banks alleged to have participated – suggest more enforcement activity is still on the way, including against lenders that were said to have received the reinsurance business. The scheme is estimated by some to have involved as much as $6 billion in kickbacks.

“In the context of the massive amount of mortgage fraud that occurred in this industry, a $15 million penalty seems pretty small,” said David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School. “But given that further enforcement against the large financial institutions that demanded the kickbacks is possibly still on the horizon, the jury is out on whether this will be an effective set of enforcement actions.”

Reiss on Mortgage Insurance Probe

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Law360 interviewed me in Lenders Face Hefty Fines in CFPB Mortgage Insurance Probe (paywall) about the recent $15 million settlement with four mortgage insurers. It reads in part:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s $15.4 million settlement Thursday with four mortgage insurers is just the first to come out of a probe into an alleged scheme to pay kickbacks to banks in exchange for business, and lenders caught up in the agency’s net are likely to get hit even harder, experts say.

In announcing the settlement, the CFPB made clear that it was looking closely at lenders and their role in the alleged kickback scheme, which the bureau said began in the 1990s. Implied in the CFPB’s statements is that the lenders were at the center of the enterprise, and that could mean that both bank and nonbank lenders could face a far stiffer penalty than the mortgage insurance firms paid, said Brooklyn Law School professor David Reiss.

“In the context of the overall markets that we’re talking about, $15 million is not even a rounding error. If this is for real, it’s going to have to be a larger settlement with the financial institutions that demanded the bribe,” he said.