Commercial banks and thrifts – most of them – continued their years-long retreat from the mortgage servicing rights market during the first quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call reports. Banks serviced a total of $4.282 trillion of home mortgages for other investors as of the end of March. That was down $134.2 billion, or 3.0 percent, from the fourth quarter. Compared to a year ago, bank mortgage servicing ... [Includes one data chart]
According to Moody’s rating scale of long-term corporate obligations, obligations rated Caa are judged to be of “poor standing” and are subject to “very high" credit risk...
Over the past year speculators have placed some heavy bets against certain publicly traded mortgage companies by shorting their stocks, a “trade” that could be petering out as investors take their money off the table. According to investors and analysts who track companies such as Nationstar Mortgage, Ocwen Financial and Walter Investment Management, the share price of all three has fallen so dramatically that the days of easy profits are over. Ocwen, for example, presently trades...[Includes one data table]
Citadel Loan Servicing this week rolled out something the residential market hasn’t seen in quite some time: a nonprime second lien from a nonbank. But don’t expect a groundswell of copycat loans. Moreover, it’s doesn’t appear that Citadel’s bold move is likely to ignite the return of nonbanks to producing second liens of any type – whether it’s a closed-end second or a line of credit. Anecdotal evidence suggests...
“Without nonbanks, today’s sluggish mortgage market would be much less vibrant,” according to research released this week by two researchers associated with Harvard University. Their working paper stresses that implementing bank-like standards for nonbanks isn’t the best strategy to mitigate risks in the housing finance system. The paper was authored by Marshall Lux, a senior fellow of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, which is part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; along with Robert Greene, a research assistant at the same center. They called...
Chuck Klein, managing director for Mortgage Banking Solutions, agrees that most of the coming M&A activity will center on small- and medium-sized shops.
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