Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt reiterated his view this week that housing finance reform should fall in the hands of Congress, not the FHFA, and discussed the GSEs’ role in expanding access to credit.Speaking at the American Mortgage Conference in North Carolina, Watt followed up on points he made during last week’s Senate Housing, Banking and Urban Affairs Committee. “I drew a distinction between decisions we have made, and continue to make, as conservator and decisions Congress must make,” he said. Watt explained that decisions the FHFA has made during the conservatorship have “fundamentally reformed” the GSEs’ operations, practices and protocols.
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt’s comments last week that he’s prepared to allow the GSEs to build a capital buffer to avoid a Treasury draw was met with both applause and concern. But this week, Bob Ryan, special director to Watt, clarified the comments stating that the plan would entail delaying the dividend payments to the U.S. Treasury Department and not suspending them. Ryan, speaking during a credit-risk transfer symposium in New York City, kicked off the first five minutes of a panel discussion about GSE reform by talking about the potential capital buffer plan. He said that it would be done strictly for the purpose of avoiding draws on the “limited resources of the preferred stock purchase agreement.”
The purchase-mortgage business showed some green shoots in April, but not enough to offset another drop in refinance activity, according to a new Inside The GSEs ranking and analysis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized $31.84 billion of purchase mortgages last month, a 12.2 percent increase from March. It was the third straight monthly gain in purchase-mortgage volume, bringing year-to-date activity to $123.46 billion, a 13.6 percent improvement over the same period in 2016. Purchase mortgages accounted for over half of GSE business in April for the first time since August of last year. But the refinance side of the business fell again in April, to just $25.49 billion. That was down 17.8...
As interest rates increase, nonbanks’ holdings of mortgage servicing rights will help offset losses tied to lower originations, according to analysts at S&P Global Ratings. “We expect market trends affecting nonbank mortgage companies to change dramatically now that rising interest rates are driving MSR valuations higher,” the rating service said in a recent report. Freddie Mac and the Mortgage Bankers Association separately forecast that the average interest rate ...
Plenty of attention continues to be paid to online mortgage shopping and to getting the e-mortgage off the ground in hopes of revolutionizing the entire home loan origination experience for the consumer. But if the potential of digitalization and related technologies is to be fully realized, the back office needs to be addressed, and soon; otherwise lenders run the risk of creating massive backlogs because of the resultant choke points. On the first point, Nate Longfellow ...
Newfi Lending, an online residential mortgage lender, is looking forward to a big origination year with the consolidation of its product lines under the “Newfi Lending” brand. A multi-channel lender, the Emeryville, CA-based lender previously operated as Nexera Holdings under two national brands – Newfi for its consumer-direct retail business and Bluestream Lending for third-party originations. In conjunction with the change, Newfi’s wholesale-broker business will now be ...
As lenders increasingly turn to subservicers to handle various functions, up-front due diligence and ongoing monitoring are necessary to help increase originations and maximize return on investment, according to Kurt Blohm, a senior manager at Richey May & Co. Blohm is the leader of the consulting firm’s subservicer oversight review service and he recently authored a white paper on selection and oversight responsibilities for holders of mortgage servicing rights ...
Since its founding roughly five years ago, mortgage technology vendor Blend has landed five top-10 residential lenders for its digital origination platform and 20 customers overall. It also has raised $60 million in seed money from investors, but has no current plans to tap the private equity market for cash, which is probably a good sign. “We may raise more money, but not at the moment,” said company Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Nima Ghamsari. But is Blend profitable ...
Publicly traded nonbank mortgage lenders and servicers reported weak earnings during the first quarter of 2017, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends summary. The nine nonbank lenders posted a combined profit of $116.69 million for the first three months of the year. That was down 79.4 percent from the fourth quarter, although it represented a huge improvement from the $509.68 million loss the group recorded in the first three months of 2016 ... [Includes one data chart]
RSS