Welcome back to iLeads Mortgage Market Minute, where we bring you the latest, most relevant news regarding the mortgage market. We hope you enjoyed last week’s edition where we talked about Mortgage Profits Drop In Second Quarter On Lower Volume. This week we’re bringing you:
Fannie Mae’s Lyle Radke to speak at HW Annual*
Head of collateral policy at Fannie to discuss the future of valuations
Appraisal modernization efforts could mean big changes for property valuations, which is why HousingWire invited Lyle Radke, director of collateral policy at Fannie Mae, to speak at HW Annual Sept. 27-28. Radke will speak on The Future of Valuations panel, discussing hybrid appraisals, appraisal waivers and the FHFA’s request for input on appraisal modernization.
At Fannie Mae, Radke’s responsibilities include the development and maintenance of collateral policy including the Fannie Mae Selling Guide, industry outreach, training and communications. He provides policy subject matter expertise and support for internal and external projects and teams including appraisal modernization, UAD and forms redesign, duty to serve, product development, Collateral Underwriter, and the Loan Quality Center.
Before his current role, Radke served as credit risk analyst and then credit risk manager at Fannie Mae. Previously he has served as the chief appraiser for Altisource and Ocwen Financial Corp.
Other speakers on The Future of Valuations panel include Shawn Telford, chief appraiser at CoreLogic, and Kade Clark, vice president of alternative valuation products, data and technology at Radian.
HW Annual will focus on All Things Housing, bringing together professionals from real estate, closing, valuations and mortgage to tackle some of the most important topics in the industry, with experts and practitioners to give you the information you can’t get anywhere else.
In addition to Radke, the event will feature a keynote with cybersecurity expert Selim Aissi, who will discuss the latest cyber threats to mortgage and real estate companies. Tim Mayopoulos, president of Blend and former CEO of Fannie Mae, will also have a keynote session.
HW Annual will also feature industry pros like Christian Wallace, head of real estate services at Better.com and Logan Mohtashami, HousingWire’s lead analyst, who will deliver his housing forecast.
The event will also have sessions covering:
Investor Share of Home Purchases in Decline*
In a report released on Monday, CoreLogic recaps investor activity in the housing market over the last decade. Its Investor Homebuying Report highlights purchase trends nationally by both investor size and the price tier of property purchased between 2011 and 2020.
The report says, at the beginning of this period, in 2011, the country “had recently reemerged from the 2006* housing market crash,” and foreclosed properties were flooding the market. Many investors were looking to buy potentially high growth residential properties at a discount during this period. That buying spree peaked in 2018 with a 16.8 percent investor share of sales. Then the pace of investment slowed. By the following year, the investment rate was 16.3 percent, falling to 15.5 percent in 2020.
The report points out that this is 0.2 percentage point lower than the investor rate in 2012, when low prices and the foreclosure crisis made home purchases attractive to investors. CoreLogic says that investors have maintained a strong presence in the market over the decade, with their participation oscillating between 15 and 17 percent of total purchases. While this share has swung higher and lower, the number of homes purchased has gradually grown. Since 2017 investors have bought an average of 1.1 million homes while their share has varied with the total purchase market.
Investment in single-family rental property has long been dominated by so-called mom and pop investors, which CoreLogic defines as those “who have kept three to 10 homes.” Attention shifted to large investors who bought up hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes during the Great Recession, but small investors remain responsible for the bulk of activity and their rate seems to be increasing. Between 2011 and 2020 their share grew from 54 to 56 percent. Between 2018 and 2020 alone it increased from 53 to 56 percent.
Small investors appear to have plucked their increased share from those of medium-size, owners of between 11 and 100 homes. Their share of purchases fell from 34 to 32 percent between 2018 and 2020. Large investors, those who retained more than 100 homes, have remained steady at around a 12 percent share over those most recent three years.
Unlicensed mortgage broker defrauded wholesale lenders*
Brent Kaufman, of Long Island, pleaded guilty to running a $4.7 million fraud scheme
A 50-year-old former unlicensed mortgage broker from Long Island, New York, pleaded guilty Wednesday to defrauding clients and wholesale lenders out of $4.7 million in mortgage refinancing proceeds that were supposed to pay off existing client mortgages.
Brent Kaufman, of Commack, New York, faces up to 30 years in prison, as well as forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Kaufman worked as an unlicensed mortgage broker and often worked with clients in Queens and Long Island to refinance their mortgages. Between 2016 and 2019, Kaufman and others defrauded Homepoint, loanDepot and United Wholesale Mortgage by providing incorrect wire routing information to the lenders for the existing mortgages, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.
“Instead of wiring the funds to the correct financial institution, the funds were instead transferred to bank accounts controlled by Kaufman,” the federal government said. “As a result, the existing mortgages were not paid off—leaving the clients with two mortgages on their homes—and Kaufman stole the funds for his own personal use.”
All told, Kaufman stole more than $4.7 million, some of which he used to make mortgage payments on the existing mortgages to avoid being caught. When he stopped making payments, several of the homes were foreclosed on, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
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