Commercial banks and thrifts earned $3.99 billion from their mortgage-banking operations during the first quarter of 2015, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. Mortgage-banking income was up 12.7 percent from the previous quarter and 19.0 percent ahead of the pace set in the first three months of 2014. Early 2015 was no record-setter, by any means, but profits were well below the levels reached in the middle of last year. The call-report data do not separate...[Includes one data table]
The real estate industry is excited about the potential use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones in marketing residential and commercial properties. But stakeholders might have to wait a bit more until federal regulations for drone usage are clear and precise. Industry participants across the country are eager to use drones for aerial photography, videography, property inspection and appraisal and for other mortgage-related opportunities UAV technology might bring. Sometime in the not-so-distant future, Realtors will be able to legally fly unmanned drones over listed properties to give prospective buyers a total view of each listed property and its surroundings. For appraisers and catastrophic insurers, drones can reduce the time it takes to provide an appraisal for a residential or ...
Investor appetite for buying and flipping residential houses appears to have eased in April, and Texas may be partially to blame, according to Auction.com’s 2015 Real Estate Investor Activity Report for April. In April, there were fewer investors looking to flip their house purchase: 50.4 percent, down from 53.5 percent for the first quarter of 2015, the report noted. The percentage of investors planning to hold the residential property and rent it out grew to 48.3 percent last month from 44.8 percent in the first quarter.Although there was strong preference among investors in live auctions for flipping over hold-to-rent in states where Auction.com conducts live bidding, there was less enthusiasm for it in Texas, the report noted. The Lone ...
U.S. Mortgage Insurers Supports GSE Risk-Sharing. The USMI wrote a letter this week to Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, in support of Shelby’s regulatory relief bill, which calls on the GSEs to engage in front-end risk sharing transactions. “This directive would make greater use of private capital to “de-risk” the GSEs, lower the exposure and costs for the enterprises and taxpayers and should lower costs to borrowers,” the trade group said. Fannie Names Winning Bidders of First NPL Sale. Fannie Mae unveiled the winning bidders on its first-ever sale of non-performing mortgages last week: SW Sponsor LLC and PRMF Acquisition, the latter of which is an affiliate of Neuberger Berman Fixed Income Funds. The GSE...
Although the trial between the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Nomura Holdings is over, Nomura said that it is planning an appeal. The Japanese-based investment bank was found financially liable last week when Federal Judge Denise Cote ruled the bank knowingly sold bad mortgage-backed securities to the GSEs ahead of the 2008 financial crisis. The FHFA is working to put a dollar amount on the damages that Nomura and RBS Securities, the underwriter of four of the seven securitizations at issue, should pay. Nomura spokesman Jonathan Hodgkinson, said in a statement that losses by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac resulted from an unprecedented decline in home prices. However, that defense approach failed. According to Cote “given the magnitude of falsity, it’s not surprising that the defendant...
Lenders are showing “restrained enthusiasm” for the new rep-and-warrant policy changes, according to Jeremy Potter, general counsel and chief compliance officer with Norcom Mortgage. The changes were made to help reduce uncertainty in addressing lenders’ concerns about when they might be asked to repurchase a loan. “On the one hand, you had some restraint where the lender’s reaction was ‘what am I really getting and how is this going to actually materialize?’ But on the other hand, there is the enthusiasm about an example of a regulator, investors and the lender community working together to make a significant advancement to accomplish goals that are good for everyone,” he said.
The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week passed the Financial Regulatory Improvement Act of 2015 by a 12 to 10 margin along party lines. The measure, introduced by committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-AL, includes a number of GSE provisions. Title VII of the bill prohibits the use of increases in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guaranty fees to offset outlays or reductions in revenues for “any purpose other than enterprise business functions or housing finance reform as passed by the Congress in the future.” The bill was approved by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Another provision would prohibit the U.S. Treasury from selling or...
Nomura Holdings Inc. is mulling an appeal following last week’s court order that it, along with RBS Securities, pay Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a total of $805.1 million to resolve claims arising from the pre-crisis sale of non-agency MBS to the government-sponsored enterprises. Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rendered the judgment May 11 after a three-week bench trial in which she found Nomura and RBS liable for the claims brought by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The MBS were backed by mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of about $2.05 billion at the time of purchase. Nomura and RBS, which underwrote four of the seven MBS deals at issue, provided...
The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee approved a Republican regulatory relief bill on a strictly partisan vote late this week, with all of the mortgage-finance provisions previously reported intact. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-PA, momentarily offered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a “get out of jail free” card, in the form of an amendment addressing capital requirements for the two government-sponsored enterprises, then withdrew it, presumably for use at a future point in time. “This is...
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