The average mortgage banking business reported increased profitability in the fourth quarter of last year, but 2010 didn’t match the industry’s success back in 2009, according to the latest Mortgage Bankers Performance Report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The average firm participating in the MBA survey reported...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2010 continued to take a beating from their MBS guarantees on high-risk mortgages, but the performance of these loans did improve somewhat last year, according to a new report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Since the beginning of 2008, the two government-sponsored enterprises have burned through...

Banks reported a significant decline in the volume of mortgage repurchases and indemnifications they recorded during the first quarter of 2011, but buybacks clearly continue to weigh on mortgage banking profitability. According to a new call report analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends, banks reported a total of $3.83 billion in mortgage repurchases and indemnifications during the first quarter. That was down 19.2 percent from the previous three-month period.The buyback problem has clearly improved since the nine months between the... [includes one data chart and one graph]

The use of Federal Home Loan Bank advances among their bank and thrift members fell overall during both the first quarter of 2011 and on a yearly basis, with two of the three largest users showing a drop-off larger than the overall industry’s year-over-year rate of decline, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database.

Bank of America successfully turned back a class-action lawsuit filed by disgruntled investors in Countrywide MBS, but new cases stemming from the collapse of the non-agency mortgage market continue to be filed. According to Judge Mariana Pfaelzer’s dismissal order in the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California, BofA and its...

The Securities and Exchange Commission this week proposed a new method for determining whether non-agency MBS will enjoy certain federal exemptions without relying on credit ratings. The SEC and other agencies in recent years have been gradually eliminating references to credit ratings in a variety of regulations affecting...

Representatives of the securitization industry are raising concerns that some key aspects of the risk-retention proposed rule that federal bank regulators are working on might bring the secondary mortgage market to a grinding halt, and are urging regulators to remove or clarify some proposals. Much of the concern has to do with...

A modest gain in the issuance of securities backed by auto financing and a boost from the student loan sector helped push total non-mortgage ABS issuance up 5.4 percent in the first quarter, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. The ABS market generated... [Includes three data charts]

Private capital could help resolve the foreclosure crisis if servicers and investors can agree to programs allowing the sale of distressed mortgages out of non-agency MBS pools, according to Jordan Dorchuck, vice president and chief legal officer at American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. Dorchuck outlined a proposal to allow...

New issuance of Ginnie Mae single-family mortgage securities declined 17.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance MBS Database. It was the slowest three-month period in Ginnie securitization since the fourth quarter of 2008. Wells Fargo ranked as... [Includes one data chart]