As long ago as 1984, Ginnie Mae was warned about deficiencies by the company that later figured in last month's collapse, according to documents. More recently, Ginnie Mae failed to adhere to its own rules and policies regarding outside review of Guardian's records. A Recent Debacle

In a recent debacle involving mobile home mortgages, which will cost Ginnie Mae $550 million, the supervisory problems were at another H.U.D. unit.

Ginnie Mae, founded in the 1960's and expanded in 1983, was created to increase the availability of home mortgages. It guarantees the principal and interest on securities backed by mortgages that are insured by the V.A. or the Federal Housing Administration but are issued by private companies. Because of the Ginnie Mae guarantee, the securities are attractive to pension funds, insurance companies and banks.

Both the V.A. and the F.H.A., which is part of H.U.D., have suffered losses on mortgages in the financially troubled oil-producing states. When those mortgages are part of Ginnie Mae securities, Ginnie Mae must absorb the losses to pay the principal and interest on the securities. Supervising a $350 Billion Market

Though it has only a few dozen employees, Ginnie Mae supervises a $350 billion market, and its troubles have grown quickly because it picks up the losses of mortgage companies that it declares in default. So far this year, there have been seven defaults; there were six in all of 1988 and four in 1987.

As a result of the increased defaults, Ginnie Mae is stuck managing $13 billion in mortgages, up from just $2.8 billion last October, said Jack Flynn, a H.U.D. spokesman. In effect, Ginnie Mae has become an asset manager, a job for which it has little experience, though it does collect more fees for servicing the portfolios, officials say.

Moreover, Ginnie Mae's losses this year already exceed what it set aside as a reserve, and next year's reserve for losses will also be insufficient, Mr. Flynn said.

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One top H.U.D. official, who asked not to be identified, said the future consequence of rising Ginnie Mae defaults and inadequate supervision ''is not going to be pretty for the taxpayers'' because the reserves will eventually be insufficient and have to be supplemented with appropriated funds. But no one is saying Ginnie Mae's overall financial reserves of $1.7 billion are not sufficient for the time being.

Guy Wilson, Ginnie Mae's vice president for mortgage-backed securities, acknowledged that the ''entire industry needs stricter oversight'' and that earlier this year Ginnie Mae had put into place a system for more frequent review of mortgage brokers. But he insisted that the agency ''has the highest standards'' and that securities guaranteed by Ginnie Mae had the highest credit ratings.

A recent episode involving mobile homes indicates how lax oversight by the housing commissioner's office, which also oversees the F.H.A., can prove costly for Ginnie Mae. Mobile Homes: Risk Is Shifted An audit report issued last year by H.U.D.'s inspector general and released last month under the Freedom of Information Act showed how a mobile home insurance program designed to limit the exposure of H.U.D. wound up being borne by the department anyway because the risks were transferred to Ginnie Mae.

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The report said that what started out as a co-insurance program under the Federal housing commissioner, in which lenders bore some of the insurance risk, became ''a full insurance risk because most lenders place manufactured housing loans in Ginnie Mae pools.''

Mr. Wilson said Ginnie Mae had set up a separate reserve of almost $550 million to cover losses in the mobile home program and believed ''the worst is behind us.''

In similar H.U.D. co-insurance programs, the F.H.A. guarantees Ginnie Mae against such losses. The report said that the mobile home program's losses and high default rates were ''attributable to weaknesses in program design.'' Program Flaws Since 1982

As far back as 1982, the inspector general found serious design flaws in the program because of inadequate controls and oversight over lenders.

''H.U.D. relies on the lender to provide sufficient oversight to the dealer who has a direct interest in getting the loan approved,'' last year's report said. ''We found dealer oversight was often ineffective in detecting irregularities.''

H.U.D. officials said Ginnie Mae faced difficulty managing the assets it inherited because of the distressed state of the mobile home market, as well as the association's lack of experience in the area.

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The issue of whether Ginnie Mae can handle this new role, as well as the increased number of defaults, helped prompt the inspector general's review of Ginnie Mae, the first such review of the agency, said Chris Greer, the deputy assistant inspector general for audit at H.U.D.

The House Banking Committee is also looking at Ginnie Mae's management of assets. The case of Guardian Mortgagee, however, shows that some of Ginnie Mae's problems are of its own making. Guardian Mortgagee: A Question of Review Last month, the New York Guardian Mortgagee Corporation had to be taken over. The eventual cost to Ginnie Mae will be more than $100 million, officials said.

This default, the largest in Ginnie Mae history, turned the agency into a trustee of Guardian's $7 billion loan portfolio. A few months earlier Ginnie Mae took $2.4 billion in mortgages from another defaulted servicer, said Mr. Flynn, who placed the total value of loans currently held in trust by Ginnie Mae at $13 billion.

Guardian's president, Louis B. Bernstein, declined to return a reporter's phone calls. Report on Company in 1984

In December 1984, after a limited random review by auditors from H.U.D.'s inspector general, Ginnie Mae was told that Guardian was generally complying with applicable rules, but that there were several deficiencies and violations of Ginnie Mae rules, according to documents obtained Friday.

Documents and H.U.D. officials say the violations, like failure to pass on in a timely fashion principal payments to investors in Ginnie Mae pools, were a precursor, albeit on a significantly smaller scale, of what happened to Guardian last month. In early 1985, officials at Ginnie Mae and the inspector general's office closed the matter on the basis of a letter from Guardian, stating it was then in compliance with Ginnie Mae rules.

Mr. Wilson said that until this year Ginnie Mae reviewed issuers like Guardian every three years but that the last regular review of the company was in July 1985. Mr. Wilson said Guardian should have been reviewed again in 1988 but was not, because Ginnie Mae changed its review procedures as a result of a contract awarded late last year. The inspector general found ''deficiencies'' in Ginnie Mae's award process for the contract, according to the most recent report to Congress by Mr. Adams.

Ginnie Mae has begun a full audit of Guardian, but only after examiners from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in examining an affiliated bank, Guardian Bank, discovered numerous mortgage-servicing irregularities.