Nationstar made “right-party” contact with delinquent borrowers to determine their eligibility for HAMP in only 65 percent of such cases from March 2013 through February, the government found.
Members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee from each party said there is interest on Capitol Hill in moving technical corrections legislation aimed at the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. However, housing finance reform legislation comes first, said Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN, and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-ND, in comments to attendees at the Independent Community Bankers Association of America’s recent 2014 Washington policy summit. Neither explained exactly why housing reform is the priority, but one observer speculated that, in football terms, “it’s probably because housing reform is closer to the goal line.” Given the suddenly deteriorating prospects for the leading measure in that regard, the so-called Johnson-Crapo bill, that doesn’t bode well for those...
Among the changes, the two GSEs will no longer require that a lender automatically repurchase a residential loan when a mortgage insurance company rescinds coverage.
Overall, refi loans accounted for 45.7 percent of agency MBS production in the first four months of 2014, compared to 77.2 percent during the same period last year.
It’s now believed that the legislation will clear the committee, but Majority Leader Harry Reid will not allow it to move any further because of weak support overall.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a combined $67.1 billion of single-family MBS during April, a solid 23.6 percent increase from the previous month, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. Agency MBS issuance has been in a prolonged downward spiral that started after a modest spurt in production in April 2013, when new issuance hit $153.6 billion, well more than double the volume in April of this year. The upside is that the volume of purchase mortgages coming into the agency market continued to build momentum through the peak home-buying season in 2013. The purchase-mortgage sector has become...[Includes two data charts]
The Federal Housing Finance Agency may soon ask for industry feedback on loan-level price adjustments, those annoying charges that result in extra fees being heaped on borrowers because they have FICO scores or downpayments that don’t fall into the category of being “pristine.” Moreover, industry executives, their lobbyists and advisors believe that over the next few months the agency may offer a trade: no increase in guaranty fees in exchange for some tweaking of LLPAs. Industry observers believe...
Over the past 10 days, MBS prices have risen by roughly 50 basis points. Since early April, prices have jumped 150 basis points, based on the Fannie Mae 4s, catching market participants off guard. Joe Farr, director of sales for MBSQuoteline, noted, “The expectation was that everyone thought bond prices would fall.” But it hasn’t turned out that way, even with the Federal Reserve continuing to taper its investment in MBS. The problem in the MBS market continues...
The retained mortgage portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to decline through attrition during the first quarter of 2014 as the two government-sponsored enterprises reported some $9.3 billion in profit, due largely to non-agency MBS legal settlements. The two GSEs held a combined mortgage-investment portfolio of $902.1 billion at the end of March, down 5.2 percent from the previous quarter. The biggest decline was in MBS holdings, down 7.3 percent, including an 8.3 percent drop in Fannie’s and Freddie’s holdings of their own MBS. Wall Street investment bankers and non-agency MBS issuers paid...[Includes one data chart]
RSS