A judge overseeing a key GSE shareholder lawsuit says she will look at another batch of government documents to determine whether they should be made available to the plaintiffs. The Federal Housing Finance Agency and Treasury Department are opposing the decision. Judge Margaret Sweeney’s May 20 order, in the Fairholme Funds, Inc. v. The United States case, requests that the defendants provide the court with hard copies of some of the documents listed in the ...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, is urging the Federal Housing Finance Agency to solicit public comments on FHFA’s policy regarding super-liens imposed by homeowner associations on loans in foreclosure. The FHFA has said it is obligated to protect the rights of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and will aggressively do so. Super-lien laws are currently in 22 states and the District of Columbia. They allow homeowner associations that are owed fees to take priority over ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac credit-risk transfer transactions have evolved since they were introduced in late 2012, according to a recent report by DBRS. The rating service analyzed Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities and Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk transactions and concluded that they have performed well with low delinquencies. DBRS attributed the strong performance to “prudent underwriting, the GSEs’ solid seller and servicer approval process and ...

Freddie Mac Sells $130 Million of NPLs. Last week, Freddie Mac announced it auctioned 487 deeply delinquent loans serviced by JPMorgan Chase Bank from its portfolio on May 31, 2016. The loans have been delinquent for approximately three and half years on average and the transaction is expected to settle in August 2016. Mortgages that were previously modified and subsequently became delinquent comprise ... [Includes two briefs]

The banking industry still hasn’t touched bottom in its years-long retreat from the mortgage servicing rights business. Banks and thrifts reported a total of $4.001 trillion of single-family mortgage servicing for other investors, most commonly mortgage-backed securities trusts, as of the end of March. That was down some $52.9 billion from the previous quarter, a 1.3 percent decline, according to a new analysis of call-report data by Inside Mortgage Trends ... [Includes one data chart]

Upheaval in hedging mortgage servicing rights during the first quarter of this year damped what was otherwise a strong performance by the loan production side, according to data reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Participants in the MBA’s quarterly performance study reported average pretax income of $752,000 for the first three months of the year. That was down 36.8 percent from the fourth quarter, and represented the lowest reading since ...

Later this month, Fannie Mae will begin to use trended credit data when completing credit risk assessments on mortgages submitted to the government-sponsored enterprise. Fannie claims the data “allow a smarter, more thorough analysis” of a borrower’s credit history, though the mortgage approval rate by the GSE isn’t expected to change much. In Selling Guide Announcement SEL-2016-04 published last week, Fannie detailed plans for trended credit data in the pending ...

A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of publicly-traded lender earnings reports reveals that profitability fell on both the production side and loan servicing. A group of 12 major lenders reported a combined $1.15 billion in production-related income for the first quarter, a 3.1 percent drop from the previous period. That outcome doesn’t look so bad in light of the fact that the group’s total origination volume was down 5.3 percent from the fourth quarter ... [Includes one data chart]

Mortgage lenders of different charters and sizes are in a hiring mode as the summer approaches, thanks to continued low interest rates and a strong job market. Moreover, origination profits are picking up. All of this spells good news for anyone with mortgage experience – be it loan officers, underwriters and especially technology workers with software writing and compliance-related backgrounds. “Most of our hiring has been around the technology side of the business,” said ...

Consumers who apply for mortgages are much more likely to open new credit card accounts and take out auto loans than consumers overall, according to TransUnion, a firm that focuses on credit issues. A new study by TransUnion included 16.7 million consumers who paid off their mortgages and moved with new mortgages or refinanced their existing mortgages between the first quarter of 2013 and the second quarter of 2015. The study focused on borrowers with a VantageScore of ...