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BofA Makes Changes to Trim Short Sale Timeline
By: Carrie Bay 04/09/2012
Bank of America is making changes to its short sale procedures and introducing an improved task flow within the short sale technology module from Equator, BofA’s short sale management platform of choice. The goal: to reduce the timeframe for a short sale decision to less than three weeks.
Starting Saturday, April 14, real estate professionals working with BofA will be required to submit five documents for short sales initiated with an offer:
The acknowledgement and disclosure form, short sale addendum, and the form for third-party authorization are available through the company’s online Agent Resource Center.
The third-party authorization form is a new standardized document developed specifically for BofA. Previously, the lender accepted third-party authorization forms in differing formats and from a variety of sources when transacting a short sale.
Bank of America says it recognized a need for greater compliance and consistency with this important document and has now created its own form to standardize the third-party authorization process. The two-page document
requires signed acknowledgments from all borrowers and designated representatives in a short sale. Beginning April 14, BofA will accept only the official Bank of America Third-Party Authorization Form for short sales.
The bank’s new short sale process will enable real estate agents, brokers, attorneys, and other short sale specialists involved in pre-foreclosure transactions to complete tasks such as document collection, valuations, and underwriting simultaneously.
With these steps running concurrently, the timeline from initiation to closing is reduced. In fact, Bank of America says it will now be able to provide a decision on a short sale offer in 20 days. Typically, BofA’s short sale process has taken anywhere from 45 days upwards.
In continuing to streamline the decision process, should the buyer walk away from the sale, Bank of America is giving agents five days to submit a backup offer. Previously, the backup offer window was 14 days. Interested buyers are limited to two counteroffers and will receive a response from the lender within three days.
BofA notes that all email messaging between designated selling agents and their Bank of America short sale specialist will continue to occur within the Equator system. Agents will receive a standard notice via email to log into the system and retrieve their messages.
In order to implement the myriad of changes, BofA’s Equator platform will be down for 10-12 hours the night of Friday, April 13 into the early morning of Saturday, April 14.
Real estate agents and other short sale professionals are invited to review a Bank of America webinar outlining the coming changes. BofA is also offering task-by-task training on the new Equator process via a webinar to be aired on Thursday, April 19 from 4-5 p.m. (EST). Additional information can be found through the company’s online Agent Resource Center.
Bank of America’s short sale and REO executive Bob Hora says the company expects short sales to continue to increase and is taking steps to ensure it is providing decisions quickly and real estate agents are alerted of status as soon as possible.
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Defending the Mortgage Interest Deduction
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The value of the mortgage interest deduction (MID) and other itemized deductions for wealthier households would be trimmed in the fiscal 2013 budget proposal President Barack Obama released yesterday, but as in the previous three years, the proposal is expected to attract little support in Congress.
As in previous years, the budget would reduce the value of itemized deductions to 28 percent for married couples with incomes over $250,000 and individuals with income over $200,000. Currently, depending on the tax bracket these households are in, the value of their deductions could be as high as 33 or 35 percent.
The proposal has never attracted sufficient support in either party to be considered, and NAR President Moe Veissi in a statement yesterday said the association would strongly oppose this or any proposal that would limit MID and other itemized deductions.
“The mortgage interest deduction is vital to the stability of the American housing market and economy,” Veissi said. “We urge the president and Congress to do no harm” to today’s fragile economic recovery. “The nation’s homeowners already pay 80 to 90 percent of U.S. federal income taxes. Raising taxes on them, now or in the future, could critically erode home values at all price levels.”
The budget request also includes a previously rejected proposal to tax the carried interest of general partners in investment partnerships, including real estate partnerships, as ordinary income rather than as capital gains, which is taxed at 15 percent. If taxed as ordinary income, it could be taxed at a higher rate, depending on the taxpayer’s tax bracket.
Analysts have said that this provision is mainly aimed at general partners of hedge funds, but general partners in real estate partnerships could get caught unintentionally in it, and NAR in the past has opposed the tax change.
Overall, the budget request, which is just the opening step in a long process in which Congress will develop a budget for passage, envisions fiscal year 2013 spending of about $3.8 trillion. Of that amount, several hundred billion would be new spending for infrastructure, research and development, and other priorities of the administration. The budget envisions cutting about half a trillion dollars from the defense budget, and another roughly half a trillion dollars through tax law changes, including the NAR-opposed curbs to the value of MID for upper-income households. More savings would cone from allowing tax cuts enacted during President George W. Bush’s administration to expire for all households except those earning less than $250,000.
In all, the administration is saying it would cut the deficit by about $3 trillion over 10 years, plus another trillion dollars from legislation Congress passed in August of last year as part of the budget deal to raise the debt ceiling cap.
White House budget overview.
To date, more than 400 homeowners statewide have received financial assistance through the program allowing them to avoid foreclosure, and 900 applicants have been approved for assistance, said Arlyne Alston, spokeswoman for the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, which administers the program.
"We expect to help at least 8,000 homeowners statewide avoid foreclosure in 2011," Alston said.
"It's a fairly new program, but we're really excited by the response we've seen so far."
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FHA Hikes Fees on Mortgages
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Daily Real Estate News | Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Home buyers with mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration will soon see a rise in fees, the agency announced Monday.
The agency is raising its fees in an effort to try to recoup some of its depleted reserves*, which suffered from the rising number of home owners who defaulted on their mortgages. The agency also says it’s raising fees to try to encourage the return of more private capital to the market.
FHA loans allow for smaller down payments, as low as 3.5 percent compared to traditional loans, and they often have less stringent credit requirements, which have made them soar in popularity in recent years. (The agency insures loans but doesn’t issue them.) About 40 percent of all new mortgages for home purchases in 2010 were FHA-backed mortgages.
In particular, FHA will increase two fees that borrowers pay. Starting April 1, it will increase its annual mortgage insurance premium for loans under $625,500, bringing the total cost from 1.15 percent of the loan amount to 1.25 percent. Starting June 1, larger loan premiums will see an increase of 0.35 percent of a percentage point, bringing the total premium costs up to 1.5 percent of the loan amount, The New York Times reports.
FHA also announced it will raise a fee for the upfront mortgage premium by 0.75 of a percentage point, which will now total 1.75 percent of the loan amount.
The New York Times illustrates the impact of the increase in a recent article: For example, a borrower with a 3.5 percent down payment with a mortgage of $193,000 can expect to pay an upfront mortgage premium alone of $3,377, compared to the prior $1,930. That can be rolled into the mortgage.
The new fees will also apply to home owners who want to refinance their mortgages, the agency announced.
The raise in fees is expected to bring in $1.25 billion in additional revenue to the agency through September 2013.
Read NAR's view of the FHA's decision to raise fees.
Source: “Buyers Face Higher Fees at FHA,” The New York Times (Feb. 27, 2012)
* Editor’s Note: FHA maintains two reserve funds. The first provides reserves to cover each mortgage that's insured for 30 years; the second is a congressionally required 2 percent reserve, which FHA draws on first to cover losses. This 2 percent reserve fund has dipped in recent years part because of continuing declines in home values, which increases the amount of reserves (and therefore more quickly depletes the reserve fund) that the agency must maintain for each mortgage. For more on how FHA reserves work, see "Myths and Facts" by NAR’s Government Affairs.
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Seniors and Young Adults Will Influence U.S. Housing Markets
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Washington, March 13, 2012
Aging baby boomers and their echo boomer children will significantly impact trends in the nation’s housing market over the next 20 years. In a new report released by the Bipartisan Policy Center, “Demographic Challenges and Opportunities for U.S. Housing Markets,” researchers at the National Association of Realtors®, The Urban Institute, and the University of Southern California analyze key demographic trends and their likely influence on housing and homeownership in the U.S.
Over the next two decades, the aging baby boomer generation will swell the nation’s senior population by 30 million. That demographic shift will likely help increase the supply of housing, since people over age 65 typically release much more housing than they absorb.
“The Northeast and Midwest are most likely to see a large number of older homeowners selling their homes to younger homeowners as the baby boomers age,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “This increased supply could mean additional buying opportunities for echo boomers. That generation will absorb 75-80 percent of the available inventory of owner-occupied housing by 2020.”
The echo boom generation includes nearly 65 million people born between 1981 and 1995. NAR’s analysis illustrates the potential impact of economic and housing policy on this generation’s demand for housing as they come of age.
“Housing, jobs and the economy are inextricably connected,” said Yun. “A strong recovery with favorable housing market conditions would encourage substantial growth in echo boomer households, which would help absorb the current vacant inventory and stabilize conditions for residential construction. Under a reasonable ‘middle’ recovery scenario, approximately 12 million new households will be formed over the next decade, requiring construction of up to 15 million new housing units.”
NAR President Moe Veissi noted that current market trends favor would-be homeowners of all ages. “As the supply of rental housing continues to fall, rents are increasing,” said Veissi, broker-owner of Veissi & Associates Inc., in Miami. “At the same time, affordability for homeowners is at a record high. For buyers who qualify and are ready to assume the responsibilities of owning a home, opportunity is knocking.”
The National Association of Realtors®, “The Voice for Real Estate,” is America’s largest trade association, representing 1 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.
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