FHA announces temporary partial waivers to HECM policies

Federal Issues FHA Covid-19 Mortgages

On September 2, the FHA announced FHA INFO 2021-70, which issues the following temporary partial waivers to its Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) policies for those impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic: (i) the temporary partial waiver of Mortgagee Letter 2015-11, which allows mortgagees to offer repayment plans to HECM borrowers with unpaid property charges regardless of their total outstanding arrearage; and (ii) the temporary partial waiver of Mortgagee Letter 2016-07, which permits mortgagees to seek assignment of a HECM immediately after utilizing their own funds to pay property taxes and insurance on or after March 1, 2020, in addition to it eliminating the three-year waiting period for such assignments. Both waivers are effective through June 30, 2022.

The same day, the agency announced in FHA INFO 2021-71 the availability of the new COVID-19 Recovery Loss Mitigation Options training webinar, initially previewed in FHA INFO 21-61 (previously covered by InfoBytes here). The webinar is designed to help mortgage servicers and other stakeholders better understand the details of the new COVID-19 Recovery Loss Mitigation Options.