Mortgage bankers reported a significant decline in profitability during the fourth quarter of 2017, taking hits on both sides of the business ledger, according to the most recent performance report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. On average, survey participants reported just $389,000 in pretax income during the fourth quarter, a 77.7 percent decline from $1.743 million in the previous three-month period. That knocked annual pretax income down to an average $5.136 million ...

Announcements involving mortgage industry participants and blockchain are coming fast and furious, with many predicting that the distributed ledger technology can improve existing processes. Some home sales have already been completed with processes involving blockchain. Ranieri Solutions recently partnered with a blockchain company. Mike Cagey, the former CEO of marketplace lender Social Finance, formed a home-equity lender that plans to use blockchain. And the ...

Inflated house appraisals known as markups lead to higher mortgage delinquencies and slower prepayments, according to a new paper by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Policy Analysis and Research. The researchers defined markups as instances where appraisals for purchase mortgages and refinances set home values higher than those generated by automated valuation models. The working paper was based in part on home-price data on more than 100 million ...

The owner of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems recently launched a product aimed to ease lenders’ adoption of electronic promissory notes, allowing for streamlined digital-mortgage originations. MERSCORP Holdings partnered with eOriginal, a digital-mortgage vendor, to offer eNote Solutions. The product allows for the creation, execution, registration and management of electronic promissory notes, known as eNotes. “This solution will enable thousands of originators to realize the ...

Bitcoin, the internet’s virtual currency, is slowly becoming an acceptable alternative method of payment for items, including real estate. Whether it will supplant the more traditional process of purchasing a home remains to be seen. Thomas Bayles, chief executive officer of Urban Asset Group, a house-flip firm in Los Angeles, last year facilitated a record-setting purchase of a mid-century house in Eagle Rock, CA, using bitcoins. The remodeled, five-bedroom residential property in ...

A ranking of primary mortgage insurance for purchase mortgages by state in the first quarter of 2018. Includes private mortgage insurance, FHA, VA and USDA Rural Housing.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had wildly different experiences in the first quarter of 2018, a period when both firms saw declining single-family business volume. But Freddie’s production of single-family mortgage-backed securities plummeted 29.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2017, while Fannie’s 5.7 percent decline was roughly one fifth as severe. Those cross-currents upended the playing field, giving Fannie a hefty ... [Includes two data charts.]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s supervision and guidance of the GSEs lacks the rigor shown by other federal financial regulators, according to the FHFA’s inspector general, Laura Wertheimer. She testified during a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing this week focusing on the oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Throughout the hearing, Wertheimer and lawmakers pointed to a number of supervisory concerns and questioned the FHFA’s standards when it comes to monitoring the mortgage giants. “The flexible and less prescriptive nature of many FHFA standards and much of its guidance has resulted in inconsistent supervisory practices,” she said.

Fannie Mae’s new headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, continues to be a bone of contention for some, but the GSE said the project is on schedule and expects it to be completed by November 2018. So far, about 20 percent of Fannie’s Washington workforce has relocated and more are planned as additional floors are finished. During a House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing this week, lawmakers inquired about the building’s costs. Federal Housing Finance Agency Inspector General Laura Wertheimer criticized the regulator’s monitoring of the build outs. Wertheimer said the initial investigation of the headquarters stemmed from a...

The latest update on the single security may signify the next step in GSE reform, according to analysts with Wells Fargo Securities. In late March, the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that the uniform mortgage-backed security collateralized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans will launch on June 3, 2019. The framework for housing-finance reform has evolved over time to building on the successful elements of the current market instead of disrupting it, said analysts Vipul Jain, Anish Lohokare and Randy Ahlgren. They noted that the single security seems to be leading toward a single MBS label with catastrophic insurance underwritten explicitly by the government.