American Homes 4 Rent, the largest publicly traded player in the single-family rental market, late this week agreed to buy American Residential Properties in a deal valued at $1.5 billion. It was the second transaction involving real estate investment trusts in the SFR sector within three months, and has sparked talk of further consolidation, including perhaps mortgage REITs. A research note from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, penned right before the AH4R-ARP combination was unveiled, noted that mergers in the space are possible “given current valuation discounts ….” In other words, the share prices of single-family rental REITs have been...

Loan modifications and other loss mitigation efforts continued to decline in the third quarter as mortgage performance improved. Servicers still face pressure on loss mitigation efforts, particularly with the Home Affordable Modification Program. Some 98,074 loan mods were completed in the third quarter of 2015, according to data released by Hope Now this week. Mod activity declined by 18.0 percent compared with the previous quarter and was down 13.3 percent from a year ago ...

Commercial banks and savings institutions continued to backpedal away from the business of servicing residential mortgages for other investors during the third quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank call reports. Banks and thrifts serviced a total of $4.139 trillion of home mortgages for other investors at the end of September, most of them pooled in mortgage-backed securities. That was down 1.2 percent from June and off ... [Includes one data chart]

Now that President Obama has signed legislation to cap Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac CEO pay, which GSE chief will leave first?

Fannie Mae last week updated its policies to allow seller/servicers to pledge a transfer of interest in their servicing income as collateral. Now Fannie, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae have three different approaches for the pledge of servicing income and/or servicing advances. David Fleig, president and CEO of MorVest Capital, an investment firm, noted that the update by Fannie follows a move by Ginnie. Last year, Ginnie started allowing issuers to pledge servicing income without notifying Ginnie. Fannie’s new policy requires...

Mortgage delinquency rates rose modestly during the third quarter of 2015 as foreclosure rates continued to improve, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Large Servicer Delinquency Index. Some 5.85 percent of the $5.477 trillion of home loans covered in the survey were in some stage of default as of the end of September. That was up from 5.70 percent in the second quarter. All of the increase came in the two least-severe categories of default. The Mortgage Bankers Association last week reported...

G-fees were tapped in a recent highway transportation bill, but eventually the language was stripped from the measure…

At the CFPB, penalty money comes in, but doesn't necessarily go out very quickly...

As part of his departure package, Raman will receive $600,000 in cash severance payments, payable over 52 weeks, but is walking away from unvested stock appreciation rights.

Hope Now said 75,969 foreclosure sales were completed in the third quarter of 2015, a 15.0 percent sequential decline and down 30.8 percent compared to 3Q14