ResCap Liquidating Trust last week filed two new lawsuits against lenders as it continued its efforts to recover losses due to bad loans purchased from correspondents that later forced the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. No other details were provided by defendant attorneys with American Mortgage Law Group, which warned that the Dec. 2 filings in Minnesota federal district court may trigger a second wave of litigation by the trust. AMLG said it has been helping a number of lenders with pre-litigation demands from the trust and has seen increased activity on that front. On Nov. 16, a federal judge dismissed...

“That’s a lot of work for an industry that apparently doesn’t exist,” said Richard Johns, SFIG’s executive director.

Late this week, Nationstar’s common was selling for $19.17 a share, just pennies below its yearly high. PennyMac Financial topped its high for the year.

In case you’re not keeping tally, there are roughly 387 calendar days remaining before the “capital buffer” at Fannie and Freddie falls to zero on Jan. 1, 2018.

Defects in mortgage loans produced under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s integrated disclosure rule fell modestly in the second quarter of 2016, after peaking in the first three months of the year. This is the first such drop since the TRID rule took effect in October 2015, according to a new quality control analysis from ARMCO, a risk management technology vendor. “TRID-related defects continue to be the leading area of concern in post-closing reviews; however ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had markedly different experiences in November in terms of new single-family business activity. Issuance of Fannie mortgage-backed securities fell 25.9 percent from October to November, while Freddie production soared 13.6 percent higher, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis and ranking. The most likely explanation for the divergence is that Freddie had more business days in which November MBS were issued. Both GSEs observed two legal holidays – Veterans Day and Thanksgiving – which knocked the number of business days down to 20 last month. But Fannie also took off the day after Thanksgiving in terms of new MBS issuance, while Freddie kept the machinery running. And although mortgage sellers set up new...

FHA and VA lenders don’t expect to see a major increase in business as a result of higher loan limits in 2017. The national “floor” loan limit for FHA is climbing $4,615 to $275,665. The maximum for high-cost markets will increase to $636,150, the same as for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, up $10,650 from this year. At best, lenders say the impact will be marginal to moderate, given the tight housing market and interest-rate fluctuations. Some lenders expect to see a flurry of ...

“Mortgage originations get crushed,” according to the latest forecast from Freddie Mac’s economic and housing research group. A number of industry analysts have adjusted their originations forecasts as interest rates on mortgages have increased recently and could climb higher next year. “Mortgage market activity will be significantly reduced by higher mortgage rates, especially refinance originations, which are likely to be cut in half,” said Sean Becketti, Freddie’s chief economist ...

If lenders evaluated borrowers more “holistically” and put less emphasis on credit scores, the share of minorities receiving purchase mortgages could increase significantly, according to analysts at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. Laurie Goodman, director of the HFPC, and Alanna McCargo, the co-director, noted that some 70.0 percent of purchase mortgages originated in 2015 went to white borrowers. They suggested that the disparate impact of tight credit is ...

The share of borrowers who want to use a mobile device as part of the mortgage shopping and origination process has increased significantly in the past year, according to survey results from Fannie Mae. The demand for mortgage-related activities completed via cell phones should prompt action from lenders, according to Steve Deggendorf, a director of market insights research at Fannie. “Lenders such as Quicken and Sofi have already begun to reflect the mobile demands of ...