The market for “fix-and-flip” properties is starting to look frothy in certain metropolitan areas, but that isn’t stopping California Capital Real Estate Advisors from moving ahead with its plan to raise $100 million from investors. CalCap has carved out a specialty niche over the past five years of funding developers and contractors in California whose goal is to buy mostly distressed properties on the cheap, fix them and sell them quickly. The privately held nonbank ...

Mortgage lenders that sell loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still focused on delivering single-family mortgages with relatively low credit risk, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loan-level data from the government-sponsored enterprises. In the second quarter of 2015, 66.4 percent of loans sold to the GSEs had credit scores of 740 or higher. That was up from 64.4 percent in the first quarter and 60.6 percent during ... [Includes one data chart]

Lenders have slowly loosened underwriting standards since the third quarter of 2013, with the credit expansion largely focused on the agency market, according to a new analysis by the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. Actions by the government-sponsored enterprises and the FHA to address buyback risk appear to have helped prompt lenders to loosen underwriting standards on agency loans. The HFPC’s credit availability index tracks ...

So far, the privately held Angel Oak has said little about its securitization plans, as has its partner on this adventure, Nomura Securities.

ARM MBS production by Fannie and Freddie in the first half of 2015 was down 20.1 percent from a year ago.

Stop the office renovations? The CFPB may be unconstitutional after all...

In particular, Wells said it would “withdraw from mortgage marketing services and desk rental agreements with real estate firms, builders and certain other referral sources.”

Industry participants largely support a plan from the Federal Housing Finance Agency to tie adjustments of the conforming loan limits to the FHFA’s “expanded data” House Price Index. The extent to which conforming loan limits should be adjusted, however, remains a topic subject to debate. In May, the FHFA noted that home prices were close to recovering from the aftermath of the financial crisis, which could prompt an increase to the conforming loan limit. The $417,000 conforming loan limit took effect in 2006 and the FHFA was prevented from reducing the limit by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. The FHFA proposed...

One consultant said many lenders are now reviewing their MSAs and may follow the lead of Prospect.

There are plenty of mortgage servicers that are building their portfolios in a market that is merely treading water, but many of the biggest players in the business continued to ease back from the business during the second quarter of 2015. As a group, the top five servicers still accounted for an impressive 40.1 percent of the mortgage servicing market, but their combined portfolio – $3.943 trillion at the end of June – shrank by 3.3 percent during the second quarter. In March, the top five accounted for 41.4 percent of the market, and at the midway point in 2014 they held a combined 44.1 percent share. Four of the top five contracted...[Includes two data tables]