What’s the difference between the federal government and the mafia?  One of them is organized.

• Last Friday Countrywide changed their conforming Fast & Easy, limiting it to 90% LTV and 80% CLTV where subordinate financing is used, and entirely eliminated their Equity Programs and House America program.
• Last week California’s Attorney General shut down four mortgage lenders for providing what he characterized as “illegal and unconscionable loans”: Lifetime Financial, Nations Mortgage, Greenleaf Lending, Virtual Escrow, Olympic Escrow and Direct Credit Solutions were shuttered for engaging in what Brown characterized as a “complex scheme” of bait and switch.
• If you want to sell a super-sized FHA loan to Wells, Purchase, Rate-term refinance, and cash out refinance with loan amounts $417,001 - $650,000 will need a FICO score of 660, and for Purchase, Rate-term refinance, and cash out refinance with loan amounts above $650k you’ll need a 680. They’re limiting their LTV’s for Purchase and Rate-term refinances at 98.75%, but Cash-out refinances at 85%. No Down Payment Assistance Programs are allowed, and a 5% reduction to LTV/CLTV in any market identified as declining by Wells Fargo or the appraiser.
• Effective March 31, Indymac will discontinue accepting e-MITS submissions and rate locks for all non-Financial Institution Sellers participating under Preferred Delegated Underwriting (“PDU”) Authority.  IMB will honor program eligible loans closed by Non-Financial Institution Sellers (i.e. Mortgage Bankers) under their respective PDU authority limits provided said eligible loans are submitted in e-MITS and rate locked on or prior to March 28, 2008. They are also capping the commitment period that may be taken to 30 days as of March 28.
• Flagstar, in compliance with mortgage insurance vendor guidelines, will no longer offer any loan programs with 100% loan-to-value (LTV) starting next Monday.  In order to ensure adequate time for mortgage insurance certificates to be issued, all loans with an LTV greater than 97% must be received in Underwriting by this Friday. This impacts their Flexible 100 and Flexible with Subordinate Financing, MyCommunityMortgage, Freddie Mac 100 & Freddie Mac 80/20, Freddie Mac Home Possible, and Flagstar Affordable programs.
• In addition, next Monday Flagstar will no longer offer any Stated Income Verified Asset (SIVA) or Jumbo Asset Based Stated Income loans with an LTV greater than 80%. This includes their Conforming Low Doc and Jumbo Fixed & ARM programs. Lastly, next Monday Flagstar “suspends” their Conforming Stated Income Stated Asset (SISA) Program.

Well, back to the market. Most lenders saw their lock volume pick up last week with the drop in mortgage rates (at last!). In addition, some activity was seen in the super-sized conforming and FHA markets, but there is still confusion besides the fact that many lenders have not even rolled their programs out yet! Unfortunately the 10-yr took the 3-day weekend to head back up to 3.44% and 30-yr A-paper mortgage prices are worse by roughly .5 in price in thin post-holiday trading.  The only news out today is at 10AM EST with February’s Existing Home Sales (a measurement of housing sector strength and mortgage credit demand, but is usually considered to be of low importance – expected -0.8% to 4.85 million units).

Tomorrow we have March's Consumer Confidence Index, giving us an indication of consumers' willingness to spend. It is expected to show no change from February’s reading of 75.0. On Wednesday we’ll see February’s Durable Goods Orders - a measurement of manufacturing sector strength by tracking new orders for big-ticket items, or products that are expected to last three or more years. Analysts are expecting it to show an increase in orders of approximately 1.0%. Thursday we have the final revision to the 4th Quarter GDP (old news), and on Friday we have February’s Personal Income & Outlays report and the University of Michigan’s revision to the March consumer sentiment index.

Friendship between Women:

A woman didn't come home one night. The next morning she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend's house. The man called his wife's 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it.

Friendship between Men: A man didn't come home one night. The next morning he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend's house. The woman called her husband's 10 best friends, eight confirmed he had slept over, and two said that he was still there.

Rob