ReadyCap Commercial LLC, a startup based in Irvine, CA, issued its first loan approval a few days ago, and hopes to issue a commercial MBS by the fall. The company’s forte is what it calls “low balance” commercial mortgages, including multifamily, office, industrial and retail properties. Its loan size menu ranges from $500,000 to $5 million, company CEO Steve Skolnik told Inside MBS & ABS. Skolnik, who until last June headed commercial services at Aurora Bank FSB, is...

During the next 12 to 24 months, investors should expect “robust growth” from the historically fragmented single-family real estate-owned-to-rental market as it emerges into an institutional asset class, according to analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. The KBW report noted that despite the market’s traditionally limited funding source of capital – retail or smaller institutional investors – its horizons are expanding. “Investor interest has increased...

Inside Mortgage Finance Publications, Inc. announced this week that it has just settled a major copyright infringement dispute with a large national financial institution for more than one quarter of a million dollars. Without admitting any infringement, liability or wrongdoing, the financial institution agreed to pay IMFP to settle charges that it had violated federal copyright laws by making unauthorized copies of Inside Mortgage Finance. IMFP alleged that the financial institution had engaged in ongoing in-fringement, distributing infringing copies of dozens of registered issues to a group of non-subscribing employees. “We never like...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that about 70 percent of the mortgages originated from 1997 to 2003 would likely meet the agency’s new “qualified mortgage” designation. Under the agency’s recently minted ability-to-repay final rule, lenders that originated qualified mortgages will be legally protected against lawsuits brought by borrowers. The ATR rule itself broadly requires lenders to consider a number of factors in underwriting most home mortgages – a few loan types ...

Hefty secondary marketing margins continued to boost mortgage banking income at a faster pace than total sales activity during the third quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank call report data. Banks and thrifts reported a total of $401.6 billion in sales of single-family mortgages during the third quarter, a hefty 11.5 percent increase from the previous three-month period. But mortgage banking income – which is derived largely from ... [Includes one data chart]

A temporary exemption for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages is among the plethora of provisions contained within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s long-awaited “qualified mortgage” rule issued last week. Even so, credit unions fear onerous GSE buyback requirements may be an unintended consequence of the new rule.Called for by the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB’s QM rule lists the characteristics of a qualified mortgage, or one that regulators will presume will be within a borrower’s ability to repay the loan.

Much attention over the last few years has centered on how best to help revive non-agency mortgage securitization. But recent advances in technology have enabled whole loan trading to emerge as a viable alternative that is filling some of the void left in the marketplace by less securitization. “At least in the U.S. residential debt market, we are seeing a much larger market for the trading of whole loans,” said Wyck Brown, president of Denver-based BlackBox Logic, a provider of loan-level data aggregation, analytics and consulting services. “Large whole loan blocks can ...

Last week’s $10 billion settlement between Fannie Mae and Bank of America over outstanding and potential repurchase claims is at least a truce in the bitter battle between the GSE and the bank that has simmered since the housing bubble burst. But the jury is still out as to how much business the two companies will do again going forward. Under the agreement, BofA will pay Fannie $3.55 billion cash and spend $6.75 billion to buy back some 30,000 loans sold by Countrywide Financial to the GSE. The “comprehensive solution” between the firms covers current and future repurchase obligations related to loans with an outstanding balance of $297 billion as of Nov. 30, 2012, that were originated and sold directly to Fannie from 2000 through 2008. The bank will also pay Fannie $1.3 billion in “compensatory fee obligations” for taking too long to address foreclosures.

A few weeks ago, ES Appraisal Services, Jacksonville, FL, closed its doors, the second national appraisal management company to go bust in the past year. The other was Appraisal Loft. ES Appraisal’s demise was a hardly a surprise. For months, industry message boards were full of comments from independent appraisers who worked as contractors for the firm, complaining about unpaid invoices. In December, the company sent an email to appraisers confirming the news. At one point the firm employed, on a contractual basis ...

Newcastle Investment announced last week that it will spin off all of its excess mortgage servicing rights and certain other residential assets as part of a new real estate investment trust. The company also participated in another significant servicing transaction with Nationstar Mortgage. The publicly traded REIT spin-off is set to be completed during the first quarter of 2013 and will be known as New Residential Investment. “We believe the separation of Newcastle and New Residential will ...