The Blackstone Group has emerged as the “Big Kahuna” of mortgage company acquisitions this year, gobbling up – or agreeing to gobble up – at least five mortgage banking firms or a majority of their assets. To date, most of the purchases have centered on small- to medium-sized originators, except for its latest conquest: a majority stake in Stearns Holdings, LLC, parent company of Stearns Lending, the nation’s 12th largest originator. Although Blackstone is publicly traded ...
The Collingwood Group says disruption may come to the mortgage finance industry because the current business model is too challenging, inefficient, costly and unresponsive to customer and business needs. “With no fundamental changes to origination processes in decades, lost efficiency, growing regulatory hurdles, high costs and low profits, there is little doubt the mortgage industry is ripe for disruption,” the firm said in a recent paper. Marketplace lenders and crowdfunders ...
A proposal from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision regarding banks’ interest rate risk includes provisions that would be “a step backward,” according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.In June, the BCBS issued a consultative document on the risk management, capital treatment and supervision of interest rate risk in its banking book. The committee of 28 regulatory bodies, including the United States, said the proposal aims to ...
With the stock market suffering major losses the past 10 days, investors in equities are bleeding red ink, but mortgage bankers are salivating at the prospect of higher application volumes thanks to declining interest rates. “We’re at the tail-end of the home-buying season when volume drops, but my members are anticipating an increase in refis,” said Glen Corso, executive director of Community Mortgage Lenders of America. The newfound optimism comes courtesy of China ...
The FHA late this month announced a new tool to supplement Neighborhood Watch’s compare ratio to give lenders a better sense of their performance and, at the same time, ease concerns about lending to higher-risk borrowers. FHA lenders welcomed the long-anticipated performance metric although concerns linger about lender liability. Nonetheless, for The Collingwood Group, a Washington, DC-based advisory firm, the question is whether the tool represents a ...
Fannie Research Shows House Price Decline for Some Oil States: The prospect of an oil bust draws comparisons to the housing slump of the 1980s in Fannie Mae’s research released Aug. 28. While most Americans enjoyed lower gasoline prices over that period, severe employment losses occurred within the oil industry, and many oil-producing states experienced general economic slowdowns and declining house prices. North Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska are most at risk. …
“The most common example is a loan program for self-employed borrowers that relies on bank statements, rather than tax returns, to determine income,” Fitch said.
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