A handful of nonbank mortgage companies reporting substantial losses during the fourth quarter weighed down industry-wide mortgage banking income, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports. A diverse group of 31 mortgage lenders that includes the biggest players in the market earned a combined $3.227 billion on their mortgage banking operations during the fourth quarter. That was down 8.2 percent from the group’s $3.516 billion during the third quarter. The fourth quarter was...[Includes one data chart]

Bulletin 2015-2. Feb. 17. Freddie Mac announced updates to the following: Guide Forms 16SF, Annual Eligibility Certification Report, and 1107SF, Seller/Servicer Change Notification Form, to implement a new requirement that seller/servicers review the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Suspended Counterparty program list; and Form 1035, Document Custodial Agreement: Single-Family Mortgages. On the servicing side, Freddie revised notification requirements for bankruptcy cramdowns, including Form 1155, Bankruptcy Cramdown Pre-Confirmation Proposal Settlement Terms. It updated reporting and remittance requirements for properties purchased by third parties at foreclosure sale, including new Form 1160, Third-Party Sale Transmittal Worksheet. Freddie also updated rollback reporting requirements and insurance loss settlement requirements, and made clarifications related to bankruptcy filings after a foreclosure sale...

Conversations with executives at leading industry technology vendors suggest that if mortgage lenders are not already testing their systems and processes for compliance with the impending integrated disclosure rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, they are already behind the curve. Tech vendors have been working with some of their clients for months already, and in some cases for more than a year, testing systems and process as they prepare for “TRID,” the Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act integrated disclosure rule. Scott Stucky, chief strategy officer at DocuTech, said...

Not only are residential loan officers in high demand these days – especially ones with fat Rolodexes – but some of these top performers are being offered “signing bonuses” of $5,000 to $40,000, and even more to jump ship. Moreover, according to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Trends, the most aggressive bidders for high-performing LOs are nonbanks, which have been steadily stealing market share away from the megabanks the past few years. “Most depositories are not committed...

Lenders should stay as far away as possible from even the appearance of basing any part of a loan officer’s pay on the terms of a mortgage. During an Inside Mortgage Finance webinar this week, Amy Durant, an attorney with the Bodman law firm in Ann Arbor, MI, emphasized the importance of the restrictions on compensation that are embedded in a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule. The rule states...

Servicers are benefitting from quicker transaction times on short sales, according to Fannie Mae. The government-sponsored enterprise said transaction time has been cut in half for short sales compared with the end of 2012, though the number of these transactions has also declined significantly. Short-sale transaction timelines currently average 45 days to 60 days, down from an average of 120 days in late 2012, according to a post on Fannie’s Housing Industry Forum website. The GSE said the HomePath short sale portal has helped reduce the time it takes to complete a short sale. The portal was released...

The default risk index for securitized agency purchase mortgages rose to a new high in January, the fifth straight month of a steady increase in the composite National Mortgage Risk Index, according to the American Enterprise Institute. The NMRI increased to 11.97 percent, a 0.4 percentage point increase from the average default risk in fourth quarter last year and 0.8 percentage points up year over year. Data also indicated...

Commercial banks and thrifts earned $3.54 billion from their mortgage-banking activities during the fourth quarter of 2014, down 23.9 percent from the previous quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. That was only slightly better than the $3.35 billion banks earned during the first quarter of 2014. For the year, the industry generated $16.41 billion in mortgage-banking income, down 36.3 percent from 2013. Last year was the second-worst year since the financial crisis in 2008; the worst was 2011, when Bank of America nearly sank the ship. BofA was...[Includes one data chart]

Only one lender accounted for more than 10 percent of the single-family mortgage volume completed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2014: Wells Fargo. The bank also dominates deliveries to Ginnie Mae and originations of jumbo mortgages. Wells had $180.89 billion in mortgage originations in 2014, accounting for 14.6 percent of total mortgage originations, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. The bank’s share of mortgage originations declined from 18.9 percent in 2013 as refinance activity slowed and nonbanks made efforts to compete for production and servicing. Officials at Wells said...

The wholesale-broker channel was the only mortgage production arena to see increased volume in the fourth quarter of 2014, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking. Brokers originated an estimated $34 billion in new home loans during the final three months of 2014, a gain of 6.3 percent from the previous quarter. The wholesale-broker channel gradually recovered from a disastrous first quarter, when brokers saw their market share slide to just 9.0 percent. By the end of the year, it was up to 10.0 percent. The broker channel generated...[Includes four data charts]