Fannie Mae has enhanced its EarlyCheck technology service to help lenders identify eligibility or data issues with loans they plan on selling to the GSE.

During the boom days, loose underwriting standards meant that many mortgages failed to meet the strict guidelines of the GSEs. More and more of these poorly written loans have come to light with the housing crisis, as defaults mount and Fannie and Freddie double-check lenders’ procedures for compliance.

If the underwriting if found to be faulty, the two mortgage giants are looking to recoup some of their losses by forcing originators to buy back the bad loans.

According to Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the GSEs’ conservator, lenders repurchased $8.7 billion of single-family mortgages from Fannie and Freddie in 2009, and slightly higher volumes are being repurchased in 2010.

During the first quarter of this year, he says banks bought back nearly $3 billion in bad home loans they’d sold to the GSEs, but there are currently more than $11 billion in repurchase requests still outstanding.

With EarlyCheck, lenders now have access to Fannie Mae delivery data checks at any point in the business process, allowing them to spot and correct potential underwriting errors earlier in the process – from prior to closing through to the pre-delivery stage.

The new EarlyCheck access options were launched over the weekend in support of Fannie Mae’s Loan Quality Initiative (LQI).