We audited the State of New York’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery-funded New York Rising Buyout and Acquisition program.  We initiated this audit based on observations related to the appraised fair market values made during a previous audit (2015-NY-1010) of the State’s program.  Our objectives were to determine whether the State ensured that (1) the appraised fair market values used to determine award amounts…

We initiated our audit in accordance with our strategic goal to provide the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with services and products to address vulnerabilities, to provide opportunities for improvements, and to recognize positive outcomes.  The audit objective was to determine whether the HUD Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD) monitored and ensured that its Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013,…

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General audited the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) based on the results of another audit, which found that the lender improperly filed for partial claims before completing the loan modifications and reinstating the loans.  Our audit objective was to determine whether FHA improperly paid partial claims that did not reinstate the delinquent loans. We found…

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General audited Bank of America because it has released more than 47,000 Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured loans into the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP) note sales program.  Since its inception, DASP has facilitated the sale of more than 108,000 FHA loans, which means that Bank of America accounts for nearly half of the entire program…

We audited the State of New York’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery-funded New York Rising Buyout and Acquisition program.  We initiated this audit due to concerns related to whether properties purchased were substantially damaged.  The objective of this audit was to determine whether the State ensured that properties purchased under the acquisition component of the program met applicable U.S. Department of Housing…

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General (OIG), assisted the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York in a civil investigation of Gateway Funding Diversified Mortgage Services, LP, now known as Finance of America Mortgage, LLC (FAM).  Gateway was a Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-approved mortgage lender.  On May 31, 2015,…

We audited selected general and application controls over the Federal Housing Administration’s Computerized Homes Underwriting Management System as part of the internal control assessments required for the fiscal year 2018 financial statement audit under the Chief Financial Officer’s Act of 1990.  Our objective was to review the effectiveness of controls for compliance with HUD information technology policies and Federal information system…

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General (OIG), assisted the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern and Western Districts of Washington in the civil investigation of Universal American Mortgage Company, LLC.  Our investigation was ongoing when a qui tam action was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.  Universal…

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of Inspector General (OIG) worked with HUD’s Office of Lender Activities and Program Compliance, Office of Single Family Housing, to resolve outstanding matters related to two September 2015 agreements with Fifth Third Bank (FTB) and its principal subsidiary, Fifth Third Bancorp, an Ohio-based bank holding company.  HUD failed to properly record required indemnifications in…

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) preforeclosure sale claim process based on an internal Office of Inspector General audit suggestion noting that existing regulations may allow excessive preforeclosure claim interest costs.  Our audit objective was to determine the amount of unnecessary preforeclosure claim interest and other costs that resulted from lender…

We audited the City of New York’s Infrastructure Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Public Facilities Program.  We selected this program for review because the City had allocated nearly $91 million to the program and disbursed more than $59.6 million as of October 31, 2017, and as part of our ongoing oversight of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Disaster Recovery programs.  Our objective was to determine…

We performed a review of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Housing Counseling Program, located within the Office of Housing Counseling.  We selected this program based on an audit suggestion that was included in our annual audit plan to help address HUD’s strategic goal to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers.  Our objective was to determine whether HUD adequately…

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) tracking of partial claim notes.  The audit was initiated in response to an Office of Inspector General preaudit analysis of HUD’s Single Family Data Warehouse (SFDW) data, which determined that partial claim notes may not have been properly tracked in HUD’s Single Family Mortgage Asset Recovery Technology (SMART) system (see Scope & Methodology section for…

We reviewed the State of Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program.  We selected the State of Florida in accordance with our goal to review disaster funding and based on a congressional request for us to conduct disaster capacity reviews for recent disasters, including Hurricanes Hermine, Matthew, and Irma.  Our audit objective was to determine whether the…

The U.S. Department of Housing Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General audited HUD to determine whether it identified and collected outstanding partial claims out of surplus proceeds from nonconveyance foreclosures.  We initiated this audit because we learned while doing unrelated audit work that a trustee attorney held surplus proceeds from two nonconveyance foreclosures and HUD had not claimed these funds to offset earlier…

We audited Towne Mortgage Company, a Federal Housing Administration (FHA) nonsupervised lender, as part of the activities in our fiscal year 2018 annual audit plan.  We selected Towne Mortgage based on our analysis of risk factors for single-family servicing lenders in Region 5’s jurisdiction.[1]  Our audit objective was to determine whether Towne Mortgage properly implemented its Loss Mitigation program for FHA-insured loans in…

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office of Inspector General audited HUD’s single-family note sales program.  This is the third in a series of audits on the note sales program.  The first audit, 2017-KC-0006, reported that HUD did not conduct rulemaking or develop formal procedures for its single-family note sales program.  The second audit, 2017-KC-0010, reported that HUD generally ensured that…

As part of our annual risk and internal planning process, we audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Block Grant Assistance’s (OBGA) Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Disaster Recovery program.  Our analysis noted that Congress had historically provided disaster funding through supplemental appropriations, yet OBGA had not created a formal codified program.  Instead, it had issued multiple…

We performed the 22nd review of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s (LMDC) administration of the $2.783 billion in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Disaster Recovery funds awarded to the State of New York in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.  The objective of the audit was to determine whether LMDC administered its Disaster Recovery-funded Lower…

While performing audit work to determine whether the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Community Planning and Development (HUD CPD) monitored and ensured that grantees complied with the 24-month statutory expenditure requirement contained in the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013, we noted issues with (1) the recording of grants in the Line of Credit Control System (LOCCS) and (2) the grantees’ recording of…