Mortgage-industry veteran John Robbins has launched a new mortgage cooperative that plans to bundle mortgages for sale into the secondary market and eventually form a conduit through which it hopes to securitize non-QM loans. “We’re going after best execution,” Robbins told Inside MBS & ABS. Of course, the venture – aptly titled The Mortgage Collaborative – is...

The private student-loan sector continues to slowly improve, but defaults and delinquencies are still at elevated levels compared to the period before the financial crisis, according to a new report by analysts at DBRS, based on data from deals that closed between 2002 and 2007. Quarterly gross defaults, as measured as a percentage of loans in repayment, slipped from 1.07 percent in the third quarter of 2013 to 1.00 percent in the fourth quarter. Similarly, the percentage of gross defaults as a percentage of the original pool balance declined from 0.55 percent to 0.50 percent. “Defaults have remained...

The GSE chief credited Fannie’s strong performance to a wide array of factors, including improving home prices and lower delinquencies, but also tighter underwriting standards which have created a pristine book of business for the company.

In what’s claimed to be the third-largest settlement of a class-action suit by investors in non-agency MBS, Royal Bank of Scotland agreed to pay $275 million in cash. Investors led by the New Jersey Carpenters Vacation Fund claimed that RBS did not disclose that loans included in Harborview MBS that it sold failed to meet the deals’ underwriting guidelines. The settlement is awaiting approval by U.S. District Judge Harold Baer in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Separately, the remains of Lehman Brothers settled...

Stakeholders continued to express concern over certain provisions in a draft model law that would be used as an overlay to, rather than a replacement of, existing state foreclosure laws. While many provisions of the current draft of the Home Foreclosure Procedures Act are right on track, several other provisions would raise the cost of lender compliance and make the origination and servicing of residential mortgages more difficult, warned stakeholders. “Sensible reform of the foreclosure process should not include...

According to responses from real estate agents involved in 1,401 transactions in January, some 45 percent of purchase mortgages with private MI experienced a delayed closing. And 42 percent of FHA purchase mortgages experienced a delay in closing.

Although some industry groups said it is too soon to get into another massive overhaul, others pointed to the forest of overlapping and confusing documents as a good place to start.

Although some regulators have anxiety problems with nonbank servicers, Fannie Mae apparently does not. Meanwhile, a large mortgage vendor M&A deal could be revealed late Friday.

Fannie Mae reported net earnings of $6.5 billion in the fourth quarter late this week, revealing that the company’s total dividend payments to the U.S. Treasury will exceed the $116.1 billion that the GSE has drawn since being put into conservatorship in late 2008. The company will pay the Treasury $7.2 billion in dividends in March. With the March dividend payment, Fannie will have paid a total of $121.1 billion in dividends to the Treasury – the equivalent amount of its entire draw plus an additional $5.0 billion.

A recently unearthed Treasury Department “action memorandum” from 2010 makes clear the White House’s commitment to ensuring that common shareholders in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should never have access “to any positive earnings from the GSEs in the future.” The memo, approved by then-Secretary Timothy Geithner, asks that Treasury waive the GSEs’ periodic commitment fee for 2011.