| Brokers, processors, and lenders can find answers to many of the FHA questions they have online.
Described as a comprehensive “how-to” source book covering subjects from direct endorsement authority through insuring, the Practical Guide to FHA Lending is an online tool that concentrates information spread across HUD handbooks and mortgagee letters, according to AllRegs, an online publisher of reference information. Mortgage U educators Alice Alvey, John Gehrke and Jan Wetzel, who collectively have over 75 years of government-lending experience, authored the guide and logically organized it to mirror the mortgage process. |
Alvey, president of Mortgage U, told MortgageDaily.com that the experiences she has had working with Federal Housing Administration loans since the early 1980s, as a loan officer, processor, underwriter and nine-year trainer of this type of lending, motivated the creation of the guide.
“Training people on FHA loans is so challenging because the information is spread out,” Alvey said. It needed to be “put in an order that makes sense with how lenders work, starting from how do I take an application, then how do I process it and how do I underwrite it.“
Throughout her experience, Alvey has constantly been asked about the “right way” to do FHA loans, how it should be done and what other lenders do.
“We took all of our years of knowledge and put in what HUD says is required, as well as added the feature of Best Practices throughout the guide,” which recommends best ways to handle certain requirements such as documentation and monitoring techniques “to make sure you’re doing good FHA business,” the executive said.
The guide specifies the items required when a veteran needs an FHA loan, helps determine what loan fits the borrower’s need, informs of the different factors used in calculations and shows detailed requirements for down payment assistance. Among other things, it also features exclusive worksheets and checklists designed with the novice user in mind that help figure out things such as the maximum loan amount for a purchase, according to the publisher.
Subjects detailed in the 18 chapters include: program criteria, purchase transactions, regular and streamline refinance transactions, mortgage insurance premiums, FHA connection, underwriting the appraisal and the borrower, closing and post closing, regulatory compliance quality control management reporting, and homeownership centers.
Within the next 60 days, the authors will add a chapter detailing how to become an FHA-approved lender or broker, according to Alvey.
Within the online tool are direct links to supporting HUD Handbooks and Mortgagee Letters. Also, tables and matrices with information of fees applicable to FHA loans and other quick answers for speed origination, processing and underwriting loans. The guide is continually updated as Mortgagee Letters and Notices require, the publisher said.
Registered guide users are also offered a liberal Site License that allows simultaneous access to their own virtual copy, in which private notes can be added to serve as bookmarks for their use only or public notes can be included to be viewed by everyone in their organization, according to AllRegs.
