Late last decade Altisource was spun-off from Ocwen, a once large servicer that in years past had been sanctioned by regulators for some of its servicing practices.
Banks and savings institutions maintained their healthy appetite for agency single-family MBS during the fourth quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. Banks and thrifts held a record $1.254 trillion of agency MBS, up 2.2 percent from the end of the third quarter and an increase of 12.4 percent from a year ago. The biggest gains were in holdings of Ginnie Mae MBS, which also happen to be the fastest-growing component of the agency securities market. Bank and thrift holdings of Ginnie pass-throughs jumped...[Includes two data tables]
Rating services appear to be taking differing approaches to rating nonprime MBS backed by new originations. The first nonprime MBS from an affiliate of Invictus Capital Partners received preliminary AAA ratings from Kroll Bond Rating Agency, Morningstar Credit Ratings and S&P Global Ratings. Those three firms did not rate...
Freddie Mac reported a net income of $4.85 billion in the fourth quarter, more than double its earnings from the previous quarter and lifting its full-year income to $7.82 billion. The government-sponsored enterprise released its earnings this week, posting one of its best profits ever in the fourth quarter. Net income for the quarter was fueled in part by gains on derivatives which amounted to $6.38 billion. “Interest rates went up an unusually large amount in the fourth quarter, therefore you saw an unusually large gain in the accounting,” Freddie CEO Donald Layton told Inside MBS & ABS. Freddie also reported...
Now that investment banker Steven Mnuchin has been installed as the Treasury secretary, work can begin on finding a solution to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government guarantors that serve as the linchpin to housing and mortgage markets. For the most part, senior mortgage officials who have been in the business for a decade or more applauded President Trump’s choice of Mnuchin, pointing to his days as the head of MBS trading at Goldman Sachs & Co. “At the very least, this is...
The chatter about the Federal Reserve shrinking its massive $4.5 trillion balance sheet and its huge $1.7 trillion portfolio of agency MBS has continued in recent days, with one Fed official talking up the idea and another describing how the U.S. central bank plans to do it. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said in a speech last week that the Fed could begin normalizing its balance sheet. “The Fed’s balance sheet has been an important monetary policy tool during the period of near-zero policy rates,” Bullard said. Thus far, the Fed’s Open Market Committee has not set...
A revised version of the Financial CHOICE Act could make changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that are so significant that other provisions in the bill aiming to loosen standards for qualified mortgages might not be necessary. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced HR 5983, the Financial CHOICE Act, in September and the committee approved the bill largely on a party-line vote that month. The bill covered a wide ...
Parkside Lending announced this week that it’s offering a new low-downpayment jumbo mortgage product that includes an option for lender-paid mortgage insurance or borrower-paid MI. The new Jumbo III product joins other wholesale jumbo offerings from Parkside, including mortgages with combined loan-to-value ratios up to 95.0 percent with no requirement for MI. Blackstone Group increased its presence in the market for rental properties by launching Finance ... [Includes two briefs]
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