Mortgage servicers participating in a recent servicing conference sponsored by Information Management Network described how they use a variety of business strategies and often change gears to adjust to evolving market conditions. Jorge Carvallo, a vice president at Banesco USA, characterized mortgage servicing rights as a “necessary evil” that his community bank generally tries to avoid. “We sell most of it because it’s economically difficult for us to ...
Mortgage-banking profits fell sharply in 2014, but the servicing side of the business held its own and helped cushion the fall in production-related income, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports. A diverse group of 11 mortgage lenders, including most of the giants of the industry, reported a combined $5.229 billion in production-related income for 2014. That was down 56.0 percent from the previous year ... [Includes one data chart]
Over the past month, Ocwen Financial has unveiled agreements to sell roughly $89.4 billion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac servicing rights – transactions that require approval from not only the GSEs, but their regulator/conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency.To date, the FHFA has made no public statements regarding Ocwen’s sales and isn’t likely to until it actually makes an approval or denial.Based on the transactions that have been announced since Feb. 23, there is little to indicate that the deals won’t pass regulatory muster. The receivables being off-loaded by the troubled servicer are considered to be pristine in nature and with little in the way of delinquencies.
A bill to replace the Federal Housing Finance Agency with a beefed up Ginnie Mae and set Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on a path to liquidation has been reintroduced in the House. The Partnership to Strengthen Homeownership Act was first introduced in July 2014 to wind down Fannie and Freddie over a five-year timeframe. Reps. John Delaney, D-MD, John Carney, D-DE, and Jim Himes, D-CT, are the lead sponsors of the measure. They said the bill takes the best ideas from both parties to create a housing finance system that combines the strengths of the private and public sectors.The congressmen agreed that things need to be done differently.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to turn their focus in loan-quality reviews to more freshly originated mortgages, the vast majority of which are current. A new Inside The GSEs analysis of disclosures made by the GSEs to the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that most of the lender repurchases made in 2014 continued to be associated with older, pre-crisis loans. But the biggest volume of pending and unresolved buyback demands were tied to loans securitized in 2013 and 2014. Sellers repurchased or provided indemnification on some $4.046 billion of mortgages during 2014, the disclosures reveal. They were split roughly evenly between Freddie ($2.031 billion) and Fannie ($2.014 billion)...[includes exclusive chart]
During 4Q14 Javelin Mortgage Investment sold all of its holdings of prime, fixed-rate, senior bonds from new-issue jumbo MBS – $119.6 million of non-agency product in total.
Tom Popik, research director of Campbell Surveys, notes that the Quicken Loans’ call-center model can be an accepted alternative to local mortgage branches.
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