Home prices aren’t increasing nearly as much as they have in other times when the inventory of homes for sale was low, according to analysts at Capital Economics. They suggest that “cautious” appraised values and tight underwriting by lenders have limited home price appreciation. Home prices are currently rising at an annual rate of around 6.0 percent. According to Capital Economics, current inventory levels and the measure of buyer and seller traffic separately suggest that annual house price growth should currently exceed 10.0 percent. “Although there is no hard data on the subject, we suspect one factor is that cautious home appraisers are preventing larger price gains,” the analysts said. Since early 2015, appraised home values have...
Wells Fargo plans to increase originations by putting an emphasis on interest-only mortgages, according to John Shrewsberry, the bank’s CFO. “We are making some modest changes to generate new loan originations, including offering interest-only jumbo mortgage loans to high quality borrowers,” Shrewsberry said late last week during Wells’ earnings call for the second quarter. Wells had...
Affiliated business arrangements may not be dead after all. Late last week, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky ruled that such a network at the heart of a lawsuit brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was in fact legitimate as constituted under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. In this case, which the bureau brought four years ago, the agency accused the Borders & Borders law firm of Louisville, KY, and its principals, Harry Borders, John Borders Jr. and J. David Borders, of illegally paying kickbacks for real estate settlement referrals through a network of shell companies. According to the CFPB’s complaint, the law firm operated...
It hasn’t been a pretty month for Walter Investment Management, the publicly traded parent company of the nation’s eighth largest servicer. And it could get even uglier by the time summer is out. Not only is Walter in danger of being kicked off the New York Stock Exchange – for having a share price of less than $1.00 for too many days – but investors appear to have given up on the company and the idea that a restructuring, now in progress, will yield positive results. If Walter is...
The nation’s megabanks have started reporting second-quarter results, revealing a mixed bag when it comes to residential originations, according to a new analysis from Inside Mortgage Finance. The nation’s largest home lender, Wells Fargo, so far, has turned in the strongest performance of the group, funding $56.0 billion of product, a handsome 27.3 percent improvement from the first quarter of the year. Bank of America held its own with a 15.8 percent sequential improvement and U.S. Bank hiked its production game by a more modest 10.2 percent. And then there are...[Includes one data table]
The supply of single-family mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae grew by 0.5 percent during the second quarter, according to an exclusive analysis and ranking by Inside Mortgage Finance. Total agency MBS outstanding rose to $6.258 trillion at the end of June, which does not include whole loans held in Fannie and Freddie portfolios or government-insured loans repurchased from Ginnie pools. The market was 4.2 percent bigger than it was at the midway point in 2016. Ginnie continues...[Includes two data tables]
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