Hi, I’m Adam De Sanctis, This is the Mortgage Minute, the latest news from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Last week, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced plans to phase out the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program, or VASP, stating that it will stop accepting new enrollees beginning on May 1st. While not much information is available yet, the VA said that the phase-out will not affect any of the program’s existing participants, nor will it impact any eligible veterans who complete their vast enrollment prior to May 1st in a press statement, MBA President and CEO, Bob Broeksmit said that halting the vast program will increase the number of veterans facing foreclosure unless the VA and Congress implement a permanent partial claim option as soon as possible. We strongly believe that work must start immediately to strengthen the VA’s loss mitigation toolkit, and that includes implementing a permanent partial claim option, a foreclosure avoidance tool that is widely used in every other government loan program, and being able to continue to push the VA to release as much information as possible on the vast phase out and its potential impact on distressed veteran homeowners. MBA has also urged the VA to reassess its authority to implement a partial claim program and is working with key HVAC members and staff to provide input as partial claim legislation is further improved ahead of a health subcommittee markup scheduled for next Wednesday. That’s it for this week. Thank you for listening.
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Adam DeSanctis, VP, Communication at Mortgage Bankers Association
As a strategic public affairs and communications executive with nearly two decades of experience, Adam has deep expertise in strategy, management, and media relations. He is widely considered to be an expert in a variety of communications, including advocacy, brand, executive, crisis, grassroots, and social media. In his career, he has been the MBA spokesperson on a wide variety of real estate research and advocacy-related issues, promoted MBA research and advocacy efforts to financial, political, and trade industry media and on MBA’s social media channels, and secured media opportunities for MBA leadership on key real estate trends and issues, generated media coverage for MBA’s research and data on mortgage applications, credit availability, homebuilder applications, mortgage forbearance/delinquencies, commercial real estate originations, and forecasts, and other industry analysis, developed key strategic initiatives for MBA’s organizational public affairs plan, media relations and member communications support for mPower, MBA’s Opens Doors Foundation and MBA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.