This week, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) provided updated guidance regarding the submission of Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) assignment requests to HUD.
Mortgagee Letter 2017-05, published Wednesday, consolidates policy found in various existing mortgagee letters and handbooks for mortgagees submitting HECM assignment requests by initiating a Claim Type 22 (CT-22) in HUD’s Home Equity Reverse Mortgage Information Technology System (HERMIT).
“By consolidating this information into one source, FHA is making it easier for mortgagees to locate the information needed to submit a HECM assignment request,” FHA stated in a memo issued Wednesday. “This, in turn, may help improve accuracy of HECM claim submissions and improve processing times for claim requests; thus, contributing to the overall goal of making it easier to do business with FHA.”
While ML 2017-05 does not contain new policy specific to assignment eligibility, the stacking order of items needed for the various documentation packages has changed.
As noted in the mortgagee letter, mortgagees submitting documentation packages in support of their Assignment Request must look loosely at the requirements and ensure all documents required are included, and that they are in the correct stacking order.
“If any documents are missing and/or are not in the correct stacking order, the assignment request will be denied and the mortgagee will have to resubmit the request,” Loveland CPA states.
Servicers are able to implement guidance in ML 2017-05as early as the publication date for all new HECM CT-22 Assignment Requests, but no later than 90 days after the publication date.
View Mortgagee Letter 2017-05 here.
Written by Jason Oliva
