In case you missed it, on June 8th FHA announced that their TOTAL (Technology Open To Approved Lenders) automated underwriting system will no longer provide the upfront or annual mortgage insurance premium factors required for a loan (FHA Info #16-36).
These factors may be found in Appendix I to the new FHA Single Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1 (Handbook).
This means the feedback returned to the AUS system used will not reflect any FHA mortgage insurance factors for the loan submitted. It is up to the lender to ensure the correct initial and annual premiums are charged and collected.
Maybe, FHA is planning to make some changes to these factors and wants to avoid the need to reprogram systems each time a change is made. If so, let’s hope it’s for the better.
In addition, as of June 11th , FHA now requires a lender to report, through TOTAL, whether a borrower had received counseling from a HUD Approved Counseling Agency for all loans. When this information is not properly entered a default value of “Not Counseled” will be returned by the AUS used when sending the case file to FHA’s TOTAL Scorecard.
One last change is to the range of allowable LTVs. The new allowable LTVs will be in a range from greater than .10% up to 125%.
The game keeps changing…TOTALLY!