Fannie Mae has announced the winning bids for its third nonperforming loan sale while Freddie Mac has begun accepting bids for its eighth NPL transaction for 2015. Up for sale in the Fannie Mae deal were approximately 7,000 NPLs totaling $1.24 billion in unpaid principal balance, divided among three pools. The winning bidders in the transaction are Fortress, through its New Residential Investment Corp., for the first and third pools and Goldman Sachs for the second pool. The government-sponsored enterprise announced the sale in October to lighten its inventory of NPLs and manage credit losses on its delinquent loan portfolio. The GSE gave up on the severely delinquent loans after attempts to cure them through loss mitigation failed. Investors and ...

Stonegate Mortgage – which holds the distinction of being the last nonbank mortgage firm to go public – is in the process of disposing of a large swath of its retail branch network in favor of a third-party originator strategy that relies heavily on brokers and correspondents. In total, it expects to close 47 branches outright by yearend or allow the offices to be taken over by a competitor. Although the company declined to discuss its strategy, recent press statements indicate it will maintain

Delinquency rates for residential mortgages fell during the third quarter of the year across all product types and improved at the 30-day, 60-day and 90-day past-due markers, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest national delinquency survey. The delinquency rate for residential mortgages dropped to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.99 percent of all loans outstanding at the end of the third quarter of 2015 – the lowest level since the first quarter of 2007, said the MBA ...

Freddie Mac failed to meet all of its goals aimed at lending to low-income homebuyers in 2014, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s preliminary annual housing report, and Rep. Bob Menendez, D-NJ, ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development, wants to know why those particular home-purchase goals went unmet. The FHFA sets annual affordability goals for the two government-sponsored ...

Trade groups representing participants in the primary mortgage market and the non-agency mortgage-backed security market are calling on federal banking regulators to address state laws that allow for “super-priority” status for homeowners’ association liens. Risks from HOA super-priority liens have been of particular concern following a September 2014 ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court. The court allowed for a homeowners’ association foreclosure sale to ...

Seven years after the financial crisis that nearly devastated the U.S. economy, the mortgage finance industry finds itself in a far better place than before the crisis but facing new challenges brought on by a tighter credit box and new regulations, according to panelists at a housing symposium late last week in Washington, DC. Hosted by the Urban Institute and CoreLogic, the forum assessed the progress of the mortgage financing industry since the financial crisis abated ...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that the baseline conforming-loan limit will remain at $417,000 in 2016. As of the third quarter of 2015, the house-price index used to make adjustments in the conforming-loan limit still had not caught up to the level set back in the third quarter of 2007. However, high-cost loan limits will go up in 39 counties next year, the FHFA said.

Originations of jumbo mortgages declined in the third quarter of 2015 compared with the previous quarter, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. A number of lenders continue to loosen underwriting standards and offer favorable pricing in an effort to originate jumbos. An estimated $85.0 billion in jumbo mortgages were originated in the third quarter. While production fell 8.6 percent on a quarterly basis, originations through ... [Includes one data chart]

The Structured Finance Industry Group and the Treasury Department continue to work on complementary initiatives to revive the non-agency mortgage-backed security market. SFIG’s upcoming plans include a push for transparency among issuers, while the Treasury has shifted its focus somewhat away from a benchmark non-agency MBS transaction. Eric Kaplan, a managing director at Shellpoint Partners and one of the leaders of SFIG’s RMBS 3.0 effort, said SFIG is ...

The latest developments in the Structured Finance Industry Group’s effort to revive the non-agency MBS market have been met with praise from many industry participants. However, larger issues continue to constrain activity in the market. SFIG recently released a package of model representations and warranties for non-agency MBS. “I think this effort to standardize reps and warrants is a really important step in helping investors get more comfortable with the sector,” Grant Bailey ...