70% Of Loan Agents Not Actively Soliciting HARP Applications

Tomorrow I will discuss the possibility of HARP 3.0, but today’s HARP chatter comes from the Federal Reserve’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (affectionately known as SLOOS).

This report, combined with Freddie’s recent Q1 financials, suggest refinancing activity is progressing but possibly at a slower pace than investors expected.

Freddie states what the industry knows: HARP is not mandatory, and implementation schedules have varied among the lenders, investors, MI firms, and warehouse banks, so accurately gauging volumes is tough.

The SLOOS report included a series of questions on HARP 2.0 in which nearly 70% of the respondents said their bank was “not actively soliciting applications, but is satisfying most demand as it comes in” (22.6%) or their bank “has very little participation in HARP” (47.2%).

Mortgage News Daily reports that, “Regarding factors that affected a bank’s willingness or ability to offer refinancing through HARP 2.0, nearly 60% cited as ‘somewhat important’ to ‘the most important’ factor: (1) difficulty in obtaining re-subordination of a second lien; (2) difficulty in transferring existing PMI coverage; and (3) put-back risk.”