With rising origination volume and solid gain-on-sale margins, the business of originating and selling home loans generated substantially more earnings during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports. But the servicing side of the business had trouble generating positive income after taking into account gyrations in mortgage servicing rights valuations and the hedges lenders place on these assets ... [Includes one data chart]

And since RBS is essentially owned by the British government, any settlement money will indirectly come from U.K. taxpayers. Who knows, maybe Adele, Paul McCartney and Elton John can chip in…

Impac presently has a market capitalization rate (stock price multiplied by number of shares) of $167.6 million.

A federal district court judge in Manhattan has named a lead master to review 9,342 mortgages for material breaches following a put-back trial against UBS Real Estate Securities. The trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York will determine whether UBS breached certain representations and warranties and may have to repurchase the defective loans originally pooled in three trusts. U.S. Bank, the trustee for all three pools, is seeking more than $2 billion in damages, court filings show. U.S. Bank sued...

Investors in auto loan ABS may need to buckle up. Both prime and subprime auto loan ABS have weakened month-over-month and year-over-year, according to S&P Global Ratings. “Collateral performance in the U.S. prime auto loan ABS sector was weaker in July, with net losses and 60-plus-day delinquencies increasing month-over-month, while recovery rates decreased,” the S&P analysts said. “Collateral performance for the subprime sector deteriorated...

Bank of New York Mellon has expanded its servicing oversight business by looking beyond the shrinking non-agency MBS market. The company recently started handling reporting duties for many small servicers on mortgages serviced for the government-sponsored enterprises. For 25 years, BNY Mellon has been a master servicer on non-agency MBS. The role involves oversight of primary servicers. BNY Mellon’s master servicing portfolio for non-agency MBS has declined along with the total amount of non-agency MBS outstanding. The firm handled...

Individual investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock lost separate legal battles to inspect the corporate records of Freddie and prove that the Treasury sweep of the government-sponsored enterprises’ profits is damaging and unjust. In the case of Arnetia Joyce Robinson v. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, et al., the shareholder plaintiff argued that her investments were materially damaged when FHFA and the Treasury Department implemented the net worth sweep back in 2012. Robinson argued...

Regulations and practices in the mortgage market will help protect investors in MBS backed by residential mortgages from marketplace lenders, according to Moody’s Investors Service. However, it’s not clear if the protections will be enough to offset the rating penalties often applied to originators and assets that lack historical performance records. Moody’s published its analysis last week, noting that while no residential MBS has been issued by a marketplace lender as yet, the firm expects issuance at some point. Marketplace lenders – the most prominent of which is Social Finance – connect...

The average daily trading volume in agency MBS fell to $195.0 billion in August, the second weakest reading of the year, according to figures compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The peak came the month before at $219.3 billion, and the low was back in March at $189.4 billion, not too far from the August volume. It’s...

Republicans running the House Financial Services Committee had enough votes, in spite of one defection, to push through a legislative markup this week a comprehensive overhaul of the Dodd-Frank Act that would eliminate the pending risk-retention requirements for ABS other than residential mortgages, among other provisions. The GOP’s preferred legislative vehicle is H.R. 5983, the Financial CHOICE (Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs) Act, dropped in the legislative hopper a week ago by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, committee chairman. “Many post mortems of the financial crisis posit...