A government mortgage agency says that it needs more resources to police the growing ranks of companies rushing to fill the void left by big banks that have stepped away from the market for riskier home loans, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. Ginnie Mae is asking for more staff in part to vet the rising number of nonbank lenders making loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, whose program makes it possible for borrowers with weaker credit to get loans with down payments as low as 3.5 percent. In the past year big banks, such as Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp., have pulled back sharply from the market after a series of multimillion-dollar legal settlements for mistakes made during the crisis. The U.S. Department of Justice has said that the banks defrauded the government by submitting loans for insurance by the FHA that weren’t eligible by misstating borrowers’ incomes or property values. The banks admitted fault in most cases, but some now say they were treated unfairly. The pullback has left an opening for nonbank lenders, such as loanDepot LLC and Guild Mortgage Co., to grab market share. Ginnie Mae, which backs mortgage securities that include FHA and other federally insured loans, expects nonbank lenders to account for about 60 percent of its business this year, up from about half last year and less than a fifth in 2011.
