Only a month in, Vicki Bott, the new deputy assistant secretary for single family housing at the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), defended against rumors saying FHA loans were the new subprime. “We will absolutely chase the bad lenders,” she said at the National Property Preservation Conference, hosted by Safeguard Properties in Washington, D.C..

Bott also put the general session audience at ease by saying FHA will be around for a long time to come and that the government agency will sustain through this marketplace. “We absolutely have the money…the fund is there.”

Recently, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) convened a council to provide recommendations to policymakers on the government mortgage insurance agency’s future.

“Currently insuring upward of 30 percent of today’s loan volume, the FHA is an indispensible part of today’s mortgage market,” said MBA Chairman Robert E. Story, Jr., in an October 26 release. “Ensuring a strong FHA has long been a top priority for MBA. Lenders need a healthy FHA more than ever if we are going to sustain this housing recovery.”

According to Bott, many reports surfacing in the mass media claiming FHA’s demise have it all wrong. FHA maintains reserves like any other private entity, in addition to managing the increased business and paying claims through their finance account. The government agency’s capital reserve fund, which is more than $30 billion, serves as a savings account to pay for their unexpected losses.

Vance Morris, director of single family asset management for HUD, was also on hand at the conference giving an insider’s perspective on what property preservation specialists can expect as the agency makes streamlined changes to its preservation and protection requirements.

As HUD continues to service FHA properties, Morris says his department is expecting a substantial increase in property preservation private contractors by Spring 2010. Taking in additional contractors means a new departmentalized structure of a mortgagee compliance monitor, a field services manager, an asset manager, and an oversight manager.

Reporting into a centralized data repository system (P260), Morris says HUD has purposely separated the roles of the field services manager and the asset manager in order to increase accountability.

HUD has divided the country into 10 contract areas, where they will install multiple mortgagee compliance monitors and field services managers, and according to Morris, whether you continue to do business with the agency will be determined by your performance.

“If you don’t do well, you’ll get less and less assignments,” he said.

Morris says HUD will be issuing 26 asset manager contracts and 35 field service contracts. The deadline to bid for the field service contracts is November 18 and those looking to bid on the asset management contracts can go to fedbizopps.gov.