We audited the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Office of Asset Sales’ U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-Held Vacant Loan Sales (HVLS) program.  The audit objective was to assess the extent to which HUD achieved its mission objectives for a 2022 vacant loan sale.  We noted deficiencies in 52 of 53 HUD-approved applications within the reviewed vacant loan sale.  These deficiencies occurred in...

HUD OIG is conducting an audit of the New York City Housing Authority's fraud risk management practices. Fraud risk management (FRM) helps ensure program integrity by continuously and strategically mitigating both the likelihood and effects of fraud.  The objective of our audit is to assess the non-federal entity’s fraud risk management practices including control activities to prevent, detect, and respond to fraud while...

HUD OIG is auditing HUD’s Office of Housing Counseling. HUD’s 2022-2026 Strategic Plan identified housing counseling as one of the strategies it would employ to achieve its strategic objective to advance sustainable homeownership. Our objective is to assess HUD’s processes for achieving its goal through pre- and post-purchase homeownership counseling, including the assessment of its use of performance metrics and the collection and use...

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Single Family Housing’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Resource Center’s handling of housing discrimination inquiries.  We initiated the audit to assist HUD with ensuring that the FHA Resource Center (1) provided accurate and complete information on potential housing discrimination to its customers and (2) ensured that instances of potential...

We contracted with the independent public accounting firm of CliftonLarsonAllen LLP (CLA) to audit the financial statements of FHA as of and for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2023 and 2022, and to provide reports on FHA’s (1) internal control over financial reporting and (2) compliance with laws, regulations, contracts, and grant agreements and other matters.  Our contract with CLA required that the audit be performed in...

HUD OIG is auditing the Office of Multifamily Housing's monitoring of civil rights compliance.  Fair housing and civil rights are critical in making sure all Americans have equal access to the housing of their choice.  The audit objective is to assess the extent to which HUD's Office of Multifamily Housing monitored civil rights compliance in their program activities. 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program offices issued departmental notices to inform public housing agencies (PHA) and owners of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021’s (the Act) requirements.  In addition, HUD program offices planned to use HUD’s revised physical inspection processes to ensure that PHAs and owners complied with the Act, namely under its new National Standards for the Physical...

HUD OIG is auditing the Office of Asset Sales’ HUD-Held Vacant Loan Sales (HLVS) program, which is another disposition option for defaulted, formerly FHA single-family reverse mortgage loans owned and competitively auctioned by HUD to reduce losses and improve recoveries to FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. The HLVS 2022-1 sale was held in December 2021 and included 1,605 settled loans with an unpaid loan balance of $398.6 million...

We audited Nationstar Mortgage, LLC’s (doing business as Mr. Cooper (Nationstar)) compliance with the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) requirements for providing loss mitigation assistance to borrowers after their COVID-19 forbearance ended. We concurrently conducted a nationwide audit of servicers’ compliance with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) COVID-19 loss mitigation requirements (HUD Office of...

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) temporary policy for endorsement of loans with COVID-19 forbearance activity because an analysis of data in HUD’s systems showed that there may have been loans that did not comply with the policy’s requirements.  The policy was one aspect of HUD’s broader emergency response to COVID-19, which also included an eviction moratorium and loan forbearance for...

HUD OIG is auditing an Oklahoma-based mortgage lender that services FHA single-family loans. Servicers initiate foreclosure when defaulted borrowers cannot or will not resume and complete their mortgage payments. Our objective is to determine whether the servicer (1) established that borrowers were ineligible for loss mitigation assistance before commencing foreclosure, and (2) reviewed requests received during foreclosure before...

HUD OIG is auditing a California-based mortgage lender that services FHA single-family loans. Servicers initiate foreclosure when defaulted borrowers cannot or will not resume and complete their mortgage payments. Our objective is to determine whether the servicer (1) established that borrowers were ineligible for loss mitigation assistance before commencing foreclosure, and (2) reviewed requests received during foreclosure before...

HUD OIG is conducting an audit of HUD's Office of Single Family Housing's oversight of the COVID-19 foreclosure moratorium. Using a moratorium beginning March 18, 2020 through July 31, 2021, Section 4022 of the CARES Act temporarily prohibited foreclosures, with the exception of vacant or abandoned homes. Our audit objective is to determine if servicers followed the requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic foreclosure moratorium.

HUD OIG is auditing the Office of Multifamily Housing Programs, which provides insurance on mortgages for multifamily rental housing properties. Between 2020 and 2022, HUD implemented changes to better manage applications after reporting an increase in volume and processing delays, which peaked with more than 500 applications waiting to be assigned for review. Our audit objective is to assess HUD’s efforts to address the processing...

HUD OIG is auditing the Office of Asset Sales' HUD-Held Vacant Loan Sale (HVLS) program, which is another disposition option for defaulted FHA notes HUD uses to reduce losses and improve recoveries for FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. In the HLVS 2022-2 part 1 sale, 703 loans were awarded to qualified mission-driven entities, representing $105.1 million in unpaid principal balance. The audit objective is to assess the extent to...

We found 13 properties with consecutive REAC scores below 60 that were missing the required flags in HUD’s Active Partners Performance System (APPS) for unacceptable physical condition.  This condition occurred because HUD did not have a quality control program to ensure that the account executives manually entered the flags into APPS and there was no automated process for flagging a property once it received the second...

HUD OIG is conducting a review of a California-based mortgage lender that originates and underwrites FHA single-family loans. Our objective is to evaluate the lender’s quality control program for originating and underwriting loans.

HUD OIG is conducting a review of a California-based mortgage lender that originates and underwrites FHA single-family loans. Our objective is to evaluate the lender’s quality control program for originating and underwriting loans.

HUD OIG is conducting a review of a Missouri-based mortgage lender that originates and underwrites FHA single-family loans. Our objective is to evaluate the lender’s quality control program for originating and underwriting loans.

HUD OIG is conducting a review of an Illinois-based mortgage lender that originates and underwrites FHA single-family loans. Our objective is to evaluate the lender’s quality control program for originating and underwriting loans.