(RECAP: While the days of “NINJA loans” (no income, no job, no assets) are for the most part gone from the American mortgage marketplace, at least one housing reckon tank says the pendulum has now swung too far in the other direction and made it harder for many Americans to get a mortgage. Less than 1% of loans that have been made after 2011 have defaulted, according to Fannie Mae’s data, the Urban Institute said, even for those borrowers with FICO scores under 700. Only “the best borrowers are getting loans today and these loans are so thoroughly scrubbed and cleaned before they’re made that hardly any of them end up going into default,” wrote Laurie Goodman, co-director of the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center in an Aug. 31 blog post on the institute’s website. “A near-zero-default environment is clear evidence that we need to open up the credit box and lend to borrowers with less-than-perfect credit,” she wrote.)

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(RECAP: In the first update for the form in more than 20 years, government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have redesigned the Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA – Fannie Form 1003/Freddie Form 67) in order to make it simpler to use and to add new data fields for increased reporting under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The new version includes simplified terminology and a clearer set of instructions for users, according to the GSEs. This, in turn, will help borrowers complete the loan application with less help from the lender. As part of the project, the GSEs worked together to make a common corresponding data set, called the Uniform Loan Application Dataset, to ensure consistency of data delivery. Lenders may start using the redesigned forms on Jan. 1, 2018; but, as of right now, there is no deadline set for their required use. The updating of the form is part of the GSEs’ Uniform Mortgage Data Program, a larger joint initiative under the direction of the FHFA, to standardize single-family mortgage data in the U.S.)

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(RECAP: Greystone has provided a $33.3 million construction loan for The Choices at Holland Windsor, a 252-unit apartment community in Virginia Beach. The property will comprise seven buildings located at the intersection of Holland Road and Windsor Oaks. Donny Rosenberg of Greystone arranged the HUD 221(d)(4) loan, the company’s first new construction transaction to utilize HUD’s 2016 MAP Guide standards for a lower Mortgage Insurance Premium (MIP) threshold based on Green and Energy Efficiency Multifamily Housing requirements.)

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