California had threatened to pull the company’s license over document requests that Ocwen was ignoring at the time. Eventually, the two parties came to terms.
FHFA Seeking Comments on Borrower Survey. The Federal Finance Housing Agency is seeking public comments concerning the information collection known as the “National Survey of Existing Mortgage Borrowers” (NSEMB). The NSEMB will be a periodic, voluntary survey of individuals who currently have a first mortgage loan secured by single-family residential property and will consist of about 80 to 85 questions. The comment period ends Jan. 11. SIFMA Supports Nomura’s Appeal in FHFA Case. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association recently filed an amicus brief in support of the defendants to reverse a case in which the Federal Housing Finance Agency argued that Nomura Holdings sold shoddy mortgage-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The hedging effects of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – including instruments bought to protect the value of agency MBS – had different results in the third quarter as interest rates unexpectedly declined and stayed low for several weeks. Overall, Fannie booked $2.6 billion of negative charges against the value of its derivatives in the third quarter, while Freddie booked a much larger charge on its hedging activities: $4.2 billion. The differential did not pass without notice, especially since earlier this month Fannie reported a companywide profit of $2.0 billion and Freddie spilled red ink of $475 million. Even Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt chimed in on Freddie’s loss, a rarity for the regulator who usually only issues statements when he has to.
Repurchases and indemnifications by banks and thrifts fell to “just” $936.0 million in the third quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank call-report data. That was the lowest quarterly buyback figure for the industry since the first quarter of 2008, when banks began disclosing this activity in their call reports. The third-quarter repurchase total was down 17.9 percent from the previous three-month period. On a ... [Includes one data chart]
With the CFPB’s legal action against PHH Corp. pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, a number of experts are revisiting the bureau’s enforcement actions related to marketing services agreements for clues as to how best to proceed going forward. What some of them are finding should give the industry pause. During a webinar this week, Jonathan Foxx, president and managing director at Lenders Compliance Group, a consulting firm ...
After launching pilot programs in Detroit last year and Chicago earlier this year, the Federal Housing Finance Agency recently announced that it is significantly expanding its foreclosure prevention initiative by adding 18 new markets. The Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative gives community organizations the first opportunity to buy foreclosed properties from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Beginning in December, NSI will grow to the 20 markets that suffered the most from the housing crisis. Each GSE had at least 100 real-estate-owned properties valued at less than $75,000 in each of those markets. The goal of the program is to help stabilize neighborhoods by letting local community organizations get an exclusive first look...
Servicers’ use of property-management contractors has helped save costs and increase efficiencies but also opened servicers to liability, according to an analysis of litigation involving contractors. Christopher Odinet, an assistant professor of law at the Southern University Law Center, noted that servicers’ reliance on property-management firms increased in recent years due to long timelines for delinquencies and foreclosures. Servicers hire the firms to inspect ...
Current readings from the house price-to-rent ratio point to the potential for a bubble in the housing market, according to John Williams, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. “I am starting to see signs of imbalances emerge in the form of high asset prices, especially in real estate, and that trips the alert system,” Williams said in a speech this month. He noted that the house price-to-rent ratio is close to where it was in 2003, and home prices continue to increase ...
RSS