A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently upheld rulings that went against Mortgage Grader, a loan shopping website that has filed a number of patent-related lawsuits. The court upheld a ruling by a lower court that found that Mortgage Grader’s claims related to the “abstract idea” of anonymous loan shopping and that the patents obtained by the firm didn’t include an “inventive concept.” Mortgage Grader filed a lawsuit in January 2013 against Costco Wholesale and ...

The mortgage lending industry is seeing a convergence of regulation, technology and demographics that is fueling a drive toward eMortgages, eDelivery and greater use of mobile devices and other technologies to simplify, digitize and speed up the mortgage process, according to Jeffrey Nuckols, senior vice president of Xerox Financial Services. On the regulatory front, most of the latest impetus, of course, has come from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s integrated disclosure ...

Mortgages to borrowers who misrepresented their occupancy status perform much worse than loans to borrowers who truthfully identify themselves as investors, according to a new analysis by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The researchers examined purchase mortgages originated between 2005 and 2007. Loan-level data from McDash Analytics was matched with credit bureau data from Equifax. The researchers defined borrowers as having committed ...

There was a hefty increase in mortgage originations for subprime borrowers with credit scores under 620, most of them FHA loans, according to Equifax. From January through October of 2015, some $50.7 billion of mortgages were originated for borrowers with credit scores below 620, the credit bureau said. That was up 28 percent from the same period in 2014. Equifax attributes this to smarter lending habits. Amy Crew Cutts, Equifax’s chief economist, said while there are many ...

Fannie Mae is planning to release an updated version of Desktop Underwriter in June with more specific details to come by the end of this month. But for now the GSE notified its lenders about some of the changes they can expect in DU Version 10.0. The updates in the latest version will “help lenders underwrite with confidence while expanding access to credit and sustainable homeownership for creditworthy borrowers,” said Fannie in a notice that went out on Jan. 28. The release is targeted to take place the weekend of June 25, 2016, and will include enhanced credit risk assessment using trended credit data provided by Equifax and Transunion. This tool...

Sometimes it seems there is more talk of lenders loosening their credit standards than actual data supporting such a shift, but a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities data unearthed some positive signs. In the fourth quarter of 2015, 14.4 percent of purchase mortgages securitized by the two government-sponsored enterprises had credit scores ranging from 620 to 699. Back at the beginning of 2014 ... [Includes two data charts]

The Blackstone Group, according to industry sources, has amassed a war chest of roughly $250 million to buy non-agency, nonprime mortgages, another sign that “big money” investors have returned to the sector. At this point, it’s hard to say how much origination volume in the sector will grow. It’s well known that over the past 18 months, bond insurance giant PIMCO has been buying loans that don’t meet the qualified mortgage test from Citadel Servicing and others. The reason is ...

Mortgage banking income generally declined for commercial banks and thrifts in the fourth quarter, although 2015 was generally more profitable than the previous year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings releases. A diverse group of 25 banks reported a total of $3.046 billion in mortgage-banking income for the fourth quarter. That was down 14.8 percent from the previous three-month period, and it marked the group’s lowest ... [Includes one data chart]

Fannie Mae said its new mortgage product that allows borrowers to have higher debt-to-income ratios because it includes income from non-borrowers is not risky. HomeReady was rolled out in August as a revised affordable lending product to replace the MyCommunityMortgage program focused on helping low- and moderate-income borrowers. A key component of HomeReady is that it counts income from relatives or friends who will also live in the home, which helps allow for a DTI ratio of up to 50 percent. Fannie said the reality of today’s market shows that homeowners are sharing homes and in many cases a significant amount of the income is being earned by the co-resident in these “extended-income households.”

Paul Hindman, a consultant at Grid Financial Services, had this to stay about the deal: “The more important question is what other mortgage-related companies are on Computershare’s shopping list….”