Some 53 percent of the distressed homeowners seeking housing counseling in the past year were minorities, according to an analysis by the Homeownership Preservation Foundation. The nonprofit HPF operates the Hope Hotline, which offers free foreclosure-prevention counseling. The hotline gained prominence in 2007 as delinquencies and foreclosures started to pile up. While the number of distressed borrowers has declined significantly in recent years, delinquencies on ...

Fannie Prices $1.351B CAS Deal. Fannie Mae priced its first credit risk-sharing transaction of 2017 last week, under its Connecticut Avenue Securities program. CAS Series 2017-C01, a $1.351 billion note offering, was scheduled to settle on Jan. 26, 2017.  Laurel Davis, vice president of credit risk transfer, said “We saw an overwhelmingly positive response to our first deal of the year from a broad range of investors.” …

With the post-election interest-rate rise sticking around, there’s a growing school of thought that residential originators will finally ease underwriting standards in an effort to boost lending volume. But the way things stand today, that could be wishful thinking. The Mortgage Bankers Association told Inside Mortgage Finance this week that its Mortgage Credit Availability Index shows a “gradual” loosening has occurred, but it credits a greater availability of jumbo product for the reading. As MBA Senior Vice President of Research Michael Fratantoni put...

According to the Mayer Brown law firm, “Financial services companies that hoped for immediate regulatory relief when the Trump administration assumed control may have to wait a bit longer…”

To be sure, individual lenders were all over the map in their reported production trends. A handful of top producers reported significant increases from the third quarter, including loanDepot, which was up 13.4 percent…

Jefferies issued two similar rated warehouse-funding securitizations in 2016, totaling $435 million.

The Citadel CEO noted that his shop is receiving many unsolicited resumes from mortgage workers employed at conventional shops, a sign that some firms are about to cut staff.

Total revenues at Clayton, its mortgage and real estate services division, increased by 10 percent to $52.6 million.

Mortgage originations defied expectations in the fourth quarter and held virtually even with the previous period, despite a measurable increase in mortgage interest rates. According to exclusive new Inside Mortgage Finance estimates, some $580.0 billion of first-lien mortgages were originated during the fourth quarter of 2016, a slight 0.9 percent drop from the third quarter. That lifted total production for the year to an estimated $2.065 trillion, up 19.0 percent from the 2015 total. Industry forecasters were...[Includes two data tables]

The new administration of President Trump wasted no time in trying to fulfill his campaign promise to roll back the tide of regulation, issuing on the day of his inauguration a freeze on new and pending regulations from executive agencies of the U.S. government. What effect this will have on mortgage lending regulation is unclear, at this point, but it’s likely to be temporary, industry insiders agree. According to a memo issued by White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, unspecified “executive departments and agencies” were...