As we discussed in our last post, the FHA is making some changes to its mortgage insurance guidelines to bolster its reserves. The details and dates of those changes are available in a new FHA mortgagee letter found here.
The first change is a small increase in the monthly mortgage insurance fees. That increase will take affect for any FHA case number that is requested on or after April 1, 2013. Any FHA application that is started prior to that date will be able to avoid that small fee increase. Further, people who have FHA loans that were started and endorsed by the FHA prior to May of 2009 will be exempt from the increase when they are streamlining to a new FHA loan.
The second change is for all FHA case numbers requested on or after June 3, 2013. After that date the monthly FHA mortgage insurance will last for the life of the loan in most cases. Currently the monthly FHA MIP can be dropped after 5 years if there is 22% equity in the home.
If you have an FHA loan (or know someone who does) contact us in the sidebar to get more info on an FHA streamline right away. While these changes won’t make FHA streamlines useless, it will be better for most borrowers to streamline before the new changes kick in.