Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have a harder time recapitalizing if their deferred tax assets are negatively impacted by corporate tax reform, according to one GSE spectator. The Trump administration said it plans to restructure taxes before housing reform. Industry observers, like former Fannie Mae CFO Tim Howard, speculate on what impact that would have on Fannie and Freddie. Howard said that putting housing reform behind tax reform adds a “complication to the task of ultimately recapitalizing the companies, should that be what [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin chooses to do.” Mnuchin recently made public comments on network news stating that while housing reform is one of his priorities, it’s going to take more time.

Three prominent GSE reform proposals have been floated over the past year and the Urban Institute said they have more commonalities than differences. In an attempt to clarify some of the choices presented in the reform proposals, Jim Parrott, senior fellow at the UI, penned a paper highlighting the similarities and zeroing in on the differences. …

The government has until April 17 to prove that the 11,000 documents it is withholding are correctly labeled as “privileged.” This week, a ruling by Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney ordered the government to review the documents and release those that are non-privileged to the plaintiff’s attorneys in Fairholme Funds Inc. et al., v. The United States. The order came on the heels of a January appeals court ruling that found the bulk of a batch of 56 documents the government refused to turn over to the plaintiff’s attorneys, after being ordered to do so last year, did not merit privilege treatment. They included various memos, emails and presentations from the Treasury, Federal Housing...

Retail banks and mortgage lenders have enjoyed a pretty good run of consistently improving customer satisfaction and loyalty over the last five years, but they could blow it if they’re not careful by exerting excessive sales pressure on borrowers, a new report by market research company J.D. Power suggests. In response to the recent fraudulent account creation scandal at Wells Fargo, J.D. Power decided to take a closer look at how this development affected retail bank customers across the U.S. and to get a better sense of the phenomenon of cross-selling. The survey found...

Homeowners over the age of 65 rarely use their mortgages to access their home equity, according to a new study by the Urban Institute and Fannie Mae. Even as a large number of seniors reported concerns about finances during retirement, Fannie noted that just 6 percent of older adult homeowners are interested in tapping their home equity. Relatively few seniors use FHA reverse mortgages, closed-end seconds, home-equity lines of credit and cash-out refinances to tap built-up home equity. One reason seniors hesitate...

A data management and analytics firm is offering a service that can identify a lender’s existing borrowers who “need” an offer for a cash-out refinance. Altair Customer Intelligence said it offers lenders a number of ways to retain existing borrowers. While cash-out refinance activity is well below the levels seen before the financial crisis, many borrowers have built up equity in their homes in recent years, making cash-outs an option. Steve Ferrell, ?inbound marketing manager at Altair, said...

There are currently more buyers for retail origination platforms than there are entities available for sale, according to Strategic Mortgage Finance Group. Stratmor helped advise First Priority Financial last year as the lender was being acquired by Caliber Home Loans. First Priority had more than 370 employees with branches in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Iowa. Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed. “This deal, along with several other transactions in the Stratmor pipeline, now enable...

The correspondent lending channel was the big winner last year in terms of increased production and market share – at least in the conventional-conforming and jumbo sectors, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. Competition among the three main production channels evened out in the government-insured market. Correspondent production of conventional-conforming mortgages increased...

It’s been roughly 42 months since the last nonbank mortgage lender went public. And it could be another 42 months before the next one comes along the way things stand today, which is kind of odd given that the industry is coming off its second-best production year of the decade. But most publicly traded nonbanks, with a few exceptions, haven’t exactly lit the world on fire the past two years. Two of the nation’s largest nonbank servicers – Walter/Ditech and Ocwen Financial – continue to trade near their 52-week lows and at a steep discount to their all-time highs. In the case of Ocwen, the fall has been...

The banking industry continued to backpedal away from the business of servicing home mortgages for other investors during 2016, according to an exclusive new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. Commercial banks and savings institutions serviced $3.808 trillion of home mortgages for other investors at the end of 2016, most of which are connected to loans in mortgage-backed securities trusts. That was down $71.6 billion from the end of the third quarter, or 1.8 percent. Over the past two years, banks reduced...[Includes one data table]