Mortgage topics dont always make the Presidents State of the Union speech, but President Obama Tuesday night may touch on the issue of credit availability and whether the government has gone too far.
In fact, 10 of the 17 banks tracked by Inside Mortgage Trends posted increased mortgage-banking income during the final three months of 2013, and all of them reported a positive showing.
Despite AEIs findings, delinquencies on GSE loans continue to fall. In December, for example, Freddies single-family delinquency rate totaled 2.39 percent compared to 3.25 percent a year earlier.
The cost of mortgage compliance was a topic making the rounds at the recent ABS Vegas show in Nevada. Attendees, of course, wanted to know who might pay for all the new added costs.
The market produced $4.94 billion of new non-agency MBS during the fourth quarter, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking, the weakest output of the year.
Besides Freddie Mac and FHA, the three other main competitors for Fannie in the multifamily sector are life insurance companies, banks and conduit lending programs.
Who at the GSEs (or at the Federal Housing Finance Agency) was responsible for telling Fannie and Freddie to set aside so much money for loan losses and were those assumptions way off base?
The fee increases and stiffer mortgage-insurance requirements implemented on FHA mortgages in the past year have helped reduce the agencys share of originations to first-time homebuyers. First-time homebuyers have traditionally been heavily reliant on FHA financing and that continues to be the case, though the FHAs dominance has declined significantly in the past year. At the start of 2013, FHA mortgages were used in about one of every two home purchases by a first-time buyer ... [Includes one data chart]