Ocwen Financial has focused somewhat on performing prime mortgages as it has expanded its servicing portfolio recently, but officials at the special servicer said nonprime mortgages account for the majority of Ocwen’s planned acquisitions. Ocwen handled a $122.19 billion portfolio (excluding subservicing) at the end of 2012, according to affiliated publication Inside Mortgage Finance, including $87.23 billion in subprime mortgages. The servicer acquired $57.42 billion in agency mortgage servicing ...
Conforming loan limits should be lowered to help draw private capital into the mortgage market, according to recommendations from a bipartisan think tank led by former policymakers. The Bipartisan Policy Center recommended phasing out the government-sponsored enterprises and replacing them with a new “Public Guarantor” that would shift mortgage finance risk to the private sector. “A gradual reduction of the loan limits for government-guaranteed mortgages would help to rebalance the ...
Five years after the subprime mortgage industry imploded, there are signs of a revival as new players are entering the nonprime space. What’s developing is “old style” home-equity lending, where loan-to-value ratios are rarely larger than 75 percent and the actual funder of the loan keeps the paper in portfolio and services it. In the past two weeks, two subprime residential firms opened their doors for business: Citadel Loan Servicing and Deephaven Mortgage. Deephaven is the brainchild of ...
Nationstar appears to be the winning bidder on the Taylor Bean & Whitaker MSR pacakge. Meanwhile: Ed DeMarco, the most powerful man in mortgage finance today?
Originations of non-agency jumbo mortgages increased by 19.4 percent in 2012 compared with the previous year, according to affiliated publication Inside Mortgage Finance. The sector is expected to continue to grow as jumbos are increasingly attractive for bank portfolios and securitization. An estimated $203.0 billion in non-agency jumbo mortgages were originated in 2012, marking the third straight year of increased production. The sector is driven by big banks ... [Includes one data chart]
FHA funding accounted for 25 percent of home-purchase financing in January, based on the three-month moving average, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. February numbers will be released shortly.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency is mandating that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each enter into $30 billion of “risk sharing” transactions this year and move a little more quickly to reduce their $1.19 trillion of on-balance sheet holdings, including whole loans and non-agency MBS. The edict comes directly from FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco, who provided few details about the initiative during a speech this week to the National Association for Business Economics. DeMarco also announced that the regulator intends to set up a new government entity that will develop and manage the common MBS securitization platform that’s been in the works for the two government-sponsored entities. One reason for pushing the GSEs to test drive risk-sharing structures is...
A federal appeals court last week revived a previously dismissed class-action lawsuit against four financial institutions brought by investors that purchased a $1.32 billion offering of MBS that later turned sour. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated and reversed a lower court’s decision to dismiss the case two years ago against the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Deutsche Bank AG, Wells Fargo Advisors and NovaStar Mortgage. The New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund was lead plaintiff. In 2007, the New Jersey fund sued...
MBS investors can expect fewer scratches and dents in non-agency MBS portfolios, according to a new analysis from Moody’s Investors Service that says houses are less likely to lose value in a recovering market and modified loan recoveries are increasing as borrowers make more payments before re-defaulting. Part of the story is that the market is seeing higher recoveries for defaulted modified mortgages than for unmodified defaulted loans. “Even though modifications on loans that were eventually liquidated in 2010 and 2011 exposed the properties to further price depreciation by delaying their liquidation, those modified loans on average still realized higher recoveries than did defaulted unmodified loans,” analysts at Moody’s said. “This is because loan modifications, even failed ones, usually enable...
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