First-time homebuyer mortgages acquired by the GSEs performed worse than repeat homebuyer mortgages, said the Federal Housing Finance Agency in a new working paper. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are riskier. Although the study found first-time homebuyers likely to face more mortgage-related challenges, the FHFA said the difference is based on demographics. “They are younger, and have lower credit scores, lower home equity, and less income and therefore are less likely to withstand financial stress or take advantage of financial innovations available in the market than repeat homebuyers,” said Saty Patrabansh, senior economist and author of the white paper. However, once these differences are taken into account he said there appears to be no difference between first-timer and repeat homebuyers in their probability of default.
Consumer advocates are calling for reforms that would address servicers’ use of property preservation companies in instances where a home appears to be vacant and scheduled for foreclosure. In recent years, more than 250 lawsuits have been filed in at least 35 states against property management firms who were acting on behalf of servicers, according to Christopher Odinet, an assistant professor of law at the Southern University Law Center. In a paper published ...
Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a modified bill that would require federal banking regulators to study the role of depository institutions in the MSR market.
Despite shrinking housing receivables, Citigroup marked up the asset value of its MSR contracts to $1.924 billion, a 14 percent improvement from the end of the first quarter.
Depository institutions – along with the top tier of companies that service loans pooled in mortgage-backed securities by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae – continued to pull back from the market during the second quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. Commercial banks, thrifts and credit unions serviced a total of $3.218 trillion of mortgage servicing rights connected with agency MBS as of the end of the second quarter. That was down 6.9 percent from the first quarter of 2015. Although depositories remain the dominant force in the agency MSR market, accounting for 64.2 percent of servicing on outstanding single-family MBS, nonbanks continued...[Includes four data tables]
According to IMF’s exclusive ranking, Cenlar ranked first among all subservicers at the end of the first quarter with an estimated $252 billion of contracts...
RSS