Despite receiving hundreds of comments against the proposed rule to ban captive insurance companies from membership in the Federal Home Loan Bank system, the Federal Housing Finance Agency forged ahead this week and issued a final rule banning them from the FHLBanks, upsetting many in the mortgage industry. The decision forces FHLBank members that had used their captive insurers to join the system prior to the FHFA’s proposed rule, many of which are ...
Although residential production increased by roughly 30 percent in 2015 over the year prior, investors beat down nonbank mortgage stocks with a vengeance as continued low interest rates forced huge markdowns on the value of servicing rights. According to an analysis of eight publicly traded nonbank lender-servicers by Inside Mortgage Finance, the stock prices of these firms are currently trading at steep discounts to their 52-week highs, with most a dollar or two above their lows. ...
The volume of home loans with private mortgage insurance that were securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dropped 17.1 percent from the third to the fourth quarter of last year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking. That’s not so bad, given that total mortgage-backed securities production by the two government-sponsored enterprises was down 19.9 percent during the last three months of 2015. The GSEs securitized ... [Includes two data charts]
At yearend, JPM held $157.1 billion of what it calls “prime mortgages” (including option ARMs), a stunning 48 percent increase over the past 12 months.