The immediate future is looking mostly bright for publicly-traded real estate investment trusts that toil in the commercial real estate sector – that is, as long as origination volumes remain healthy. Several high-profile commercial REITs – including Starwood Property Trust, Colony Financial and Ladder Capital – do not report second quarter results until next week, but hopes are high that earnings will be mostly positive. One commercial REIT that did report this week was...
A Manhattan federal judge on Wednesday ordered Bank of America to pay a $1.27 billion penalty over mortgage fraud related to Countrywide Financial’s “Hustle” program, a little more than half of what the government had said the bank should pay, while the bank and Department of Justice discuss a potential MBS fraud settlement. Last October, the DOJ and the Securities and Exchange Commission successfully proved in court that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost some $850 million from thousands of loans acquired through Countrywide’s “high-speed swim lane” program – known as HSSL or “Hustle.” The loan program ran...
Mortgage buybacks and indemnifications may be off their peak in terms of volume, but they are widely expected to continue for the foreseeable future, industry experts said this week. But the good news for the industry is that there are a variety of defenses and coping strategies available, depending on the particulars of a given situation. Amanda Raines, a partner in the Washington, DC, office of the BuckleySandler law firm, told participants of an Inside Mortgage Finance webinar this week that more buybacks are definitely on the way. “The Department of Justice is still making financial fraud a priority,” she said. Raines noted...
Next week, Nationstar Mortgage reports its second quarter results. If the company misses the targets set by investment bankers, it could be a blood bath…
The Countrywide purchase, completed in the summer of 2008, has cost BofA close to $60 billion in operating losses and legal settlements, depending on how the numbers are counted.
Non-depository institutions aren’t letting a relatively stagnant mortgage servicing business stop them from continuing to build market share, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking of mortgage servicers at the midway point in 2014. Nonbanks that ranked among the top 30 servicers as of the end of the second quarter serviced an estimated $1.792 trillion of home mortgages, an increase of 12.4 percent over the past year. Depository institutions serviced considerably more – $5.142 trillion – but their aggregate portfolio was down 7.8 percent from the midway point in 2013. The shift to nonbank servicing from the first quarter was...[Includes two data charts]
Mortgage lenders repurchased just $522.5 million of home loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the first quarter of 2014, according to disclosures filed by the two government-sponsored enterprises with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That was by far the lowest quarterly repurchase volume reported by the GSEs, according to an analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter. Because Fannie and Freddie this year stopped providing detailed repurchase activity data in their quarterly earnings, the SEC disclosures are the only comprehensive source of GSE buyback activity. First-quarter repurchase volume was...[Includes one data chart]
Smaller and mid-size mortgage lenders were more likely than larger lenders to say their credit standards tightened over the past three months and will tighten more in the next quarter, while larger lenders were more likely to say their credit standards eased in the prior quarter and will continue in the next, according to results of a new lender survey announced by Fannie Mae. The divergent view of credit standards between larger lenders and others is among the key findings of the government-sponsored enterprise’s new Mortgage Lender Sentiment Survey. The quarterly survey focuses on the supply side of the mortgage business and dovetails with Fannie’s monthly national survey of consumers, which provides current information on the demand side of housing. Lender survey results collected during the first two quarters of 2014 showed...
Despite certain “unique” circumstances under which principal might be reduced on a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan, the government-sponsored enterprises’ blanket prohibition on principal reduction remains in place, according to the GSEs’ regulator. The Federal Housing Finance Agency said it remains true to its long-standing policy despite a recent change in management and in the face of continued calls by progressive groups for the FHFA to embrace the use of principal reduction on GSE-backed loans in foreclosure mitigation. “As outlined in FHFA’s 2014 Strategic Plan for the Conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FHFA is...
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