Lenders facing rising interest rates might be overlooking valuable hedging options, according to officials at Mortgage Capital Management. The firm offers pipeline risk-management services and is touting float-down locks, or put options on interest rates, which MCM claims will increase earnings stability and grow production. A float-down lock allows a borrower to receive a lower interest rate on their mortgage if rates decline between when ...
Fannie Mae has priced its fourth and largest risk-sharing transaction to date, a more than $2 billion offering pegged to a pool of mortgages acquired last year, the GSE announced last week. The $2.05 billion note is the GSE’s third transaction under its Connecticut Avenue Securities series issued this year. Last year, the Federal Housing Finance Agency ordered both Fannie and Freddie Mac to shrink their role in the U.S. housing market. The latest offering – Series 2014-C03 – included reference loans with original loan-to-value ratios of up to 97 percent and “is consistent with prior transactions.”
Trying to find out how much money an individual mortgage company spends each year in marketing its products to consumers is no easy task. A quick survey of some of the nation’s largest lenders on advertising dollars conducted by Inside Mortgage Trends yielded the same exact response: “We don’t disclose that information.” Many large lenders don’t even engage in specific mortgage-related advertising, at least not on a national level. The one exception is ...
New mortgage insurance eligibility rules proposed earlier this month by the Federal Housing Finance Agency appear likely to cause some MIs to tweak their corporate structures and/or to raise additional capital, note industry observers. In its draft Private Mortgage Insurer Eligibility Requirements, the FHFA directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to revise, expand and align their risk management requirements for mortgage insurance counterparties.The updated financial requirements incorporate a new, risk-based framework that ensures that approved insurers have a sufficient level of liquid assets from which to pay claims.
Critic: CFPB Regulations Ensure Fannie, Freddie Market Dominance. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, through its scores of regulations, has stifled and discouraged mortgage market growth away from the GSEs, a critic of the bureau noted during the CFPB’s third anniversary last week. “One of the important effects of the CFPB has been to ensure the continuing market dominance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the way they have written their mortgage regulations, which give you a pass if you make a loan eligible for sale to Fannie or Freddie or give you very onerous legal risks if you don’t,” said Alex Pollock, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Mortgage lenders generally earned more on their servicing operations than on production activity during the first quarter of 2014, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports from firms that disclose such information. The 10 companies in the sample group reported a combined $850.4 million in production-related income during the first three months of 2014, compared with $1.33 billion in servicing income ... [Includes one data chart]
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in June rebounded from a decline the previous month with a big boost in the volume of single-family mortgages securitized by the two GSEs, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. Fannie and Freddie issued $51.6 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities in June, a 15.2 percent jump from the previous month. Year-to-date MBS issuance was down 60.9 percent from the same period a year ago.
California remains the top source of new single-family mortgages for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even as Fannie remains the dominant GSE in terms of production through the first half of the year, according to an Inside The GSEs analysis. A total of $56.9 billion in home loans on Golden State properties were securitized by the two GSEs during the first six months of 2014, accounting for 21.0 percent of their total business for the half year.
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