The city of Los Angeles on Wednesday filed a civil lawsuit against Deutsche Bank and its subsidiaries for failing to maintain the properties of loans that were pooled in non-agency MBS for which the company served as trustee. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich filed the over 200-page complaint, which accused the bank of...

A handful of high-profile developments on the representations and warranties front over the last few months is prompting non-agency investors to contemplate whether they should start pricing in the benefits associated from repurchases. A few weeks ago, Bank of America and mortgage insurer Assured Guaranty reached a...

Several of the top mortgage servicers in the industry reported ongoing shrinkage in their portfolios during the first quarter of 2011, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking. As a group, the top five servicers reported a 1.1 percent drop in their combined servicing operations from... [Includes one data chart]

After the subprime mortgage crisis, renting is looking more appealing than ever and reshaping the outlook for residential mortgage lending. During a recent conference hosted by the Urban Land Institute in Washington, DC, many panelists agreed that single-family housing is becoming less popular, and more people are looking to...

One of the emerging compliance priorities for mortgage lenders will be to synchronize as much as possible their adoption of separate rules for “qualified mortgages” and “qualified residential mortgages” developed by federal regulators following the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Adding to the challenge is...

Mortgage origination activity dropped sharply in early 2011 and momentum is pointing toward further declines as the housing market limps into a new buying season. Mortgage lenders generated an estimated $325.0 billion in single-family originations during the first three months of the year, a decline of... [Includes two data charts]

The American Guild of Appraisers met with Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, on April 14 to ask for his help in resolving the guild’s concerns with the Federal Reserve Board’s interim final rule on appraiser independence and reasonable and customary fees, which was implemented on the first of the month...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development clearly spelled out that lenders must be discrete in their use of the FHA “Approved Lending Institution” insignia and defined other specific regulations relating to logo use in a letter to lenders this week. Improper use of HUD or FHA logos can result...

Ginnie Mae tightened several regulations relating to its mortgage-backed securities program over the last month as its MBS issuance hit a two-year low in early 2011. Ginnie All Participants Memo 11-04 changed rules that had allowed servicers to include delinquent loans into Ginnie pools. The memo told...[Includes one data chart]

With the flow of new jumbo mortgage securitizations still running at a trickle, the non-agency MBS market remains dominated by resecuritization deals that face new regulatory hurdles ahead. New issuance of non-agency MBS dropped...[Includes four data charts]