About 90 percent of the housing markets in the U.S today are considered affordable, according to RealtyTrac. Speaking at a recent real estate conference in Miami, RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist said places like San Diego and Seattle are on the threshold of exceeding their historic affordability. …
Mortgage regulators have sounded alarms and written new rules in response to the growing market share of nonbanks in the servicing market, but nonbank servicers were much more dominant 10 years ago. At the end of 2005, nonbanks accounted for 40.6 percent of mortgage servicing outstanding at the time. At the end of March 2015, nonbanks were making headlines because they had a combined 27.3 percent share of the market. …
Increased regulation and a relatively stable lending environment have helped reduce mortgage fraud, although that could change as purchase mortgages become more prevalent. Interthinx, a provider of risk management services for lenders, said in its new annual report for 2014 that mortgage fraud declined by 4 percent compared with 2013. The biggest drop was in fraud relating to a borrower’s employment or income. …
A more subtle version of looking at redlining is becoming a major focus in fair-lending analysis, according to industry experts participating in a recent webinar sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance. The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act was created in 1974 largely as a tool to fight discriminatory redlining, a practice named for maps that some lenders developed that literally outlined in red the parts of the market where they would not do business. HMDA’s focus on mapping…
Two weeks ago, specialty servicer Wingspan Portfolio Services shuttered its Melbourne, FL, office, leaving 150 servicing workers without a job. But more bad news may be on the way for the once fast-growing “contract” servicer. According to industry officials close to the company, the privately held Wingspan is in need of new contracts – badly. …
The pending implementation of the integrated disclosures rule is driving a sea change in at least two critical areas: technology innovation and regulatory expectation. Competency with the former will facilitate the fulfillment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s so-called TRID rule, according to speakers at the American Bankers Association’s recent regulatory compliance conference in Washington, DC. The rule, now scheduled to take effect Oct. 3, requires new consumer disclosures under the Truth in Lending Act and…
With same-sex marriage becoming law throughout the land, the question for the mortgage industry is how this would help the housing market. There is very little market research on homeownership rates among gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender and same-sex couples. But a recent survey by the National Association of Gay & Lesbian Real Estate Professionals found 54 percent of LGBT respondents own some type of real estate and, of those, 8 percent own a vacation home. In…
Nonbank seller-servicers continued to claim a larger share of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac business during the booming second quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis.The two GSEs securitized $232.4 billion of single-family mortgages during the second quarter, up 22.3 percent from the first three months of the year. Freddie posted a bigger gain, 28.5 percent, than did Fannie (up 18.0 percent). Nonbank sellers accounted for 46.5 percent of loans securitized by the GSEs during the second quarter. They delivered $107.9 billion to Fannie and Freddie mortgage-backed securities during the period, up 24.7 percent from the first quarter. Among nonbank sellers, the biggest gain was posted by smaller and mid-sized mortgage companies, which accounted for 27.6 percent of GSE second-quarter business.
Guaranty fees as a whole have more than doubled since 2009, from 22 basis points to a record high of 58 bps in 2014, said the Federal Housing Finance Agency in a report released this week analyzing the fees. The 58 bps includes 15 bps of upfront loan-level pricing adjustments and 43 bps as part of an “ongoing fee.”Fees also jumped year-over-year as they were at 51 basis points in 2013. Two FHFA-directed increases in 2012 are the primary drivers for the sizeable increase from 2011, when the average fee was 26 bps, then rose in 2014. Higher fees have been met with strong resistance from originators...
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