Six months ago, New Residential Mortgage didn’t own any mortgage servicing rights, though it was active in the market as a buyer of excess servicing and in other forms. It ended March 2017 as the sixth-largest servicer in the industry, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking, and that is probably some kind of record. New Residential reported owned MSR on $252.0 billion of mostly Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pools at the end of the first quarter. During the first three months of the year, it acquired $92.5 billion of servicing from CitiMortgage and smaller chunks from United Shore, Residential Credit Solutions and Walter/Ditech. Its reported first-quarter total appears to include a $67.0 billion buy from PHH Mortgage that has not yet closed. In addition, New Residential held...[Includes two data tables]
Freddie Mac continued to make a profit in the first three months of 2017 but its net income slipped to $2.2 billion, a 54.2 percent sequential decline from the previous quarter, according to the government-sponsored enterprise’s earnings statement published this week. The GSE attributed the decline to a reduction in market-related gains with interest rates and spreads remaining steady. There were fewer refinance transactions, and non-cash hedging gains disappeared during the quarter. Freddie’s core business of collecting guarantee fees continued...
Congress should consider comprehensive reform in six areas to improve the solvency of the National Flood Insurance Program and improve resilience to flooding, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. The report comes in the wake of bipartisan legislation introduced last week in the Senate to reauthorize the NFIP and to broaden participation of private insurance in the flood insurance market. The program’s current authorization will expire in September this year. The GAO recommended...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week warned that a large downpayment alone is not enough to prove the ability to repay a non-qualified mortgage when the loan was underwritten based on the consumer’s assets. “As an initial matter, a downpayment cannot be treated as an asset for purposes of considering the consumer’s income or assets under the ATR rule,” said the CFPB. “The ATR rule requires creditors to consider a consumer’s reasonably expected income or assets, ‘other than the value of the dwelling, including any real property attached to the dwelling that secures the loan.’” Further, while the size of a downpayment generally affects the loan amount, the ATR rule already accounts...
Denmar Dixon, who stepped down as CEO of Walter Investment Management Corp. last year, received $6.62 million in total compensation for 2016 while the company posted a net loss of $529 million.
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