Fewer rural single-family mortgages and modified home loans with a USDA guarantee were securitized during the first six months of 2018 compared to last year. Delivery of USDA loans into Ginnie Mae pools over the last two quarters totaled $8.6 billion, down 10.1 percent from the same period last year but up 12.4 percent in the second quarter from the prior period. PennyMac topped all USDA issuers with $1.7 billion worth of rural housing MBS issued during the first half of 2018, up 22.1 percent year-over-year. New issuance also rose 30.0 percent in the second quarter from the previous quarter, enough for a 20.2 percent share of the securitized USDA market. ... [chart]
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is placing all single-family foreclosure processes under one roof and under one team. A comprehensive plan is being implemented to centralize all foreclosure functions to make them more effective, efficient and focused on customers, the agency said. Part of the plan is to consolidate individual state private-attorney agreements into a single contract across the single-family portfolio. USDA sees the state-by-state PA contracts as “bridge agreements” to a larger procurement award that allows foreclosure services to be conducted on a nationwide basis, said Joel Baxley, administrator of the USDA Rural Housing Service. Baxley said foreclosure resolutions are taking too long and are costly due to backlogs, which, in turn, results in unnecessary losses to the government. Streamlining the process and developing one foreclosure and ...
Roughly $97.1 billion of bulk mortgage servicing rights changed hands in the second quarter, bringing year-to-date activity to $193.3 billion, according to Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter. But even stronger sales may lie ahead.