Ally Financial – which operates mostly as an auto lender now – plans to reenter the residential mortgage space, a move that comes more than three years after the depository threw its Residential Capital subsidiary into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and liquidated its once-massive servicing portfolio. Then again, a quick look at Ally’s balance sheet reveals that it still holds a tidy sum of home mortgages, $7.85 billion in residential first liens and $344 million in junior liens ...

Household growth between 2010 and 2030 will be overwhelmingly nonwhite and half of the net new homeowners over the next 15 years will be Hispanic, according to experts in a forum on demographic changes hosted this week by the Urban Institute. Groups with low “headship” rate (the number of householders who are primary borrowers) and homeownership rates, including Hispanics and other nonwhites, constitute a growing share of the U.S. population ...

President Obama is expected to sign the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill this Friday, which includes several provisions in the Jumpstart GSE Reform Act and prohibits the GSEs from building capital anytime soon. The bill would prevent the Treasury from selling its stock in the GSEs, but would not prevent guaranty fee increases to fund other government spending. A recent twist introduced a sunset provision this week that would limit the prohibition on Treasury sales of GSE stock just for the next two years. Investors Unite, a shareholders trade group, noted that this provision is “effectively locking in the status quo of the flawed conservatorship well into 2017.” Section 702 of the 2,000-plus page omnibus spending bill limits the sale of...

Despite millions of dollars and hours spent on educating consumers about the mortgage process, many still lack the knowledge and understanding of how the process works, results of a new Fannie Mae survey suggest. The survey set out to discover why the homeownership rate remains at a low level (63.7 percent in the third quarter of 2015) despite easing credit standards, a higher employment rate and strong consumer desire to own a home. The online survey of 3,868 respondents found ...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is tackling duty-to-serve rulemaking, several years after being mandated by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, and issued a proposed rule this week that could expand the GSEs’ role in manufactured housing loans, affordable housing preservation and mortgages funded in underserved rural areas. FHFA is seeking comments on the proposed rule to implement duty-to-serve and its focus on making sure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are serving markets that have traditionally been underserved. The manufactured housing industry is one of those underserved markets where leaders have been asking for more clarity. “In developing the proposed rule, the FHFA tried to strike a balance between the requirements...

As an increasing share of “baby boomer” mortgage executives reach retirement age over the next few years, there’s a growing concern about a talent “brain drain” from the industry. But rest assured, there’s still plenty of senior managers who plan on working well past the standard retirement age of 65. “The retirement rate of 10,000 people [baby boomers] per day may be applicable to the general population, but I do not think it is applicable to the mortgage banking industry,” said Larry Charbonneau ...

Wells Fargo is close to reaching a $25.75 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit involving delinquent borrowers who were charged fees for property inspections. The settlement would resolve allegations of violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, among other issues. The bank has denied the allegations while noting that it desires to settle the lawsuit to avoid “the burden, expense and uncertainty of continuing litigation.” The lawsuit, Young v. Wells Fargo ...

A significant shift occurred in bank loan modification practices in the third quarter of 2015, according to data from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Major banks’ use of proprietary loan mods declined sharply compared with the previous quarter while the number of Home Affordable Modification Program mods was nearly level in that span. The OCC’s data cover eight banks with a combined $3.73 trillion servicing portfolio, 42 percent of all outstanding first-lien residential mortgages ...

There was a flurry of activity, including a call for an investigation by the Department of Justice of Mortgage Bankers Association President David Stevens and two others, following a Dec. 7 New York Times piece criticizing the Obama administration and MBA for looking to shut down the GSEs. Stevens, along with Michael Berman, a former MBA chair, and Jim Parrott, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, all former government officials turned private-sector employees, each met with housing policy officials at the White House after leaving their government posts, according to a guest log review by the New York Times.

An analysis of the first in a wave of loans that were modified after the financial crisis suggests that interest rate resets required by the Home Affordable Modification Program are not causing a spike in delinquencies. The predominant loan mod completed under HAMP reduced a borrower’s interest rate to as low as 2.00 percent for five years, then required a yearly 1.00 percentage point increase to the interest rate until reaching the primary mortgage rate in effect at the time of the mod ...