HUD Did Not Always Implement Corrective Actions To Further Ensure That HECM Borrowers Complied With Principal Residency Requirements

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General (OIG), completed a corrective action verification (CAV) of recommendations from four prior home equity conversion mortgage (HECM) audit reports.  The CAV was initiated because protecting the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mutual mortgage insurance fund is one of HUD’s top management challenges.  The prior audits determined that HUD lacked controls to prevent HECM borrowers from violating principal residency requirements.  The CAV objectives were to determine whether HUD implemented adequate corrective actions in response to (1) recommendation 1B from audit report 2012-PH-0004, (2) recommendation 1B from audit report 2013-PH-0002, (3) recommendation 1B from audit report 2014-PH-0001, and (4) recommendation 1C from audit report 2015-PH-0004.  We found that HUD implemented the agreed-to corrective action for one recommendation, did not implement the ongoing corrective action for one recommendation, and did not implement corrective actions for two recommendations.