The Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle announced that its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has amended the Bank’s consent order in keeping with its improved financial performance. In October 2010, the FHFA directed the Seattle Bank to implement steps to stabilize its business, improve its capital classification and return to normal operations.

Reform-minded lawmakers should move with all deliberate speed to restructure, recapitalize and remove Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the government’s hands or risk the taxpayers’ stake in the mortgage market, experts told members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. The committee’s hearing prior to the Thanksgiving break focused on when and how to terminate the charters of the two government-sponsored enterprises, as well as whether current revenue held by Fannie and Freddie should be used to offset the cost of the new system.

Freddie Rescinds Fraud Training Requirement. Freddie Mac has withdrawn a requirement announced in September mandating fraud training in Bulletin 2013-13, issued Nov. 15. Freddie had required that seller/servicers provide third-party vendors retained to perform functions relating to origination and servicing of mortgages with training on fraud prevention, detection and reporting. The GSE decided to revisit the issue. In addition, the bulletin updates payment history verification requirements for manually underwritten mortgages, and announces that eligibility requirements applicable to higher-priced mortgage loans, previously announced in August, are applicable to higher-priced covered transactions (as defined in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage rule) and not solely to HPMLs.

Since the beginning of 2012, it’s been relatively difficult to lose money in mortgage banking, but that was no longer the case in the third quarter of this year. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association quarterly performance report, slightly more than one fourth of the industry failed to turn a profit during the third quarter. Starting in the first quarter of 2012, over 90 percent of mortgage bankers in each period reported net pretax profits. The average pretax income for ...

Prospect Mortgage of Sherman Oaks, CA, is a strong candidate for an initial public offering: It’s a retail-only originator whose loan production is top-heavy in purchase-money loans and it has all the right agency and FHA approvals. The privately-held firm also has a $13 billion servicing portfolio and licenses to lend in 48 states. Moreover, in early September it raised $150 million by selling five-year senior notes in the capital markets. Over the past few months rumors have surfaced that the ...

Lender-paid mortgage insurance has garnered renewed interest lately from mortgage lenders as an alternative to FHA-insured loans, whose increased costs have shut out many cash-strapped borrowers. David Williams, vice president of RightStart Mortgage in Pasadena, CA, said his firm has been getting a lot of requests from wholesale brokers for conventional conforming loans with LPMI because the FHA product has lost its competitive edge. With borrower-paid private MI, the homeowner pays a monthly ...

Nonbanks are better than banks at controlling foreclosure timelines and servicing costs, according to industry analysts. Nonbank special servicers have significantly increased their servicing portfolios in the past year and expect to acquire even more servicing from banks in 2014. “The cost of servicing for banking institutions has increased in lockstep with the additional processes to maintain compliance with regulatory requirements,” according to Fitch Ratings. “In response, a number of large banks have employed ...

Capacity constraints and demand for same-servicer refinances helped lenders book significant profits in recent years, according to an analysis published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Lenders’ profits have declined in recent quarters with the shift toward purchase-mortgage originations due to higher interest rates. A group of researchers determined that higher prices paid by investors in agency mortgage-backed securities in recent years weren’t offset by corresponding increases in ...

Independent mortgage bankers saw increased value in their servicing assets that helped offset slumping production volume in the third quarter, according to a quarterly survey by Richey May & Co. The accounting and business advisory firm found that overall production slid 12.4 percent from the second quarter, and refinance volume was down 42.0 percent. The survey also found that average values of indies’ servicing portfolios increased by seven basis points from the second quarter to the third ...

A civil complaint filed by W.J. Bradley Mortgage in California state court against a former top loan officer and her new employer could decide what type of contact and other information an LO can take with them when they leave a firm. Since the fall, the WJB suit filed against former company LO Shelly Logemann, her new employer RPM Mortgage, its owners and others has been the talk of mortgage-banking circles in California and elsewhere. The case is being closely watched...