The Countrywide purchase, completed in the summer of 2008, has cost BofA close to $60 billion in operating losses and legal settlements, depending on how the numbers are counted.
Mortgage lenders face a heftier Home Mortgage Disclosure Act reporting load under a proposed rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would implement a number of changes mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act – and then some. The bureau views implementation of the Dodd-Frank changes as an opportunity to improve the data collected under HMDA, ease some reporting burden and modernize how the data are collected and reported, the agency said. The CFPB proposed...
The Mortgage Bankers Association is pressing regulators and legislators for uniform national requirements for testing of loan originators. In a shift from the bank-friendly issues frequently pursued by the trade group, the MBA is calling for testing requirements that currently apply to nonbanks to be expanded to banks. “MBA believes that all consumers should know that every LO, regardless of what type of lender they work for, meets a demonstrated minimum threshold of knowledge of mortgage lending by passing a test,” the trade group said. The changes sought by the MBA would also allow...
In recent weeks, speculators have been pressing their bets that certain publicly-traded mortgage companies could be in for a world of hurt because origination volumes are likely to remain subdued this year and there is little chance of growth through servicing acquisitions. According to figures compiled by Compass Point Research & Trading and public websites, the two most-shorted mortgage stocks are Nationstar Mortgage and PHH Corp. Measured by the percentage of shares publicly available (known as “float”), Nationstar has...
Non-depository institutions aren’t letting a relatively stagnant mortgage servicing business stop them from continuing to build market share, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking of mortgage servicers at the midway point in 2014. Nonbanks that ranked among the top 30 servicers as of the end of the second quarter serviced an estimated $1.792 trillion of home mortgages, an increase of 12.4 percent over the past year. Depository institutions serviced considerably more – $5.142 trillion – but their aggregate portfolio was down 7.8 percent from the midway point in 2013. The shift to nonbank servicing from the first quarter was...[Includes two data charts]
Mortgage lenders repurchased just $522.5 million of home loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the first quarter of 2014, according to disclosures filed by the two government-sponsored enterprises with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That was by far the lowest quarterly repurchase volume reported by the GSEs, according to an analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter. Because Fannie and Freddie this year stopped providing detailed repurchase activity data in their quarterly earnings, the SEC disclosures are the only comprehensive source of GSE buyback activity. First-quarter repurchase volume was...[Includes one data chart]
Smaller and mid-size mortgage lenders were more likely than larger lenders to say their credit standards tightened over the past three months and will tighten more in the next quarter, while larger lenders were more likely to say their credit standards eased in the prior quarter and will continue in the next, according to results of a new lender survey announced by Fannie Mae. The divergent view of credit standards between larger lenders and others is among the key findings of the government-sponsored enterprise’s new Mortgage Lender Sentiment Survey. The quarterly survey focuses on the supply side of the mortgage business and dovetails with Fannie’s monthly national survey of consumers, which provides current information on the demand side of housing. Lender survey results collected during the first two quarters of 2014 showed...
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