Some industry analysts suggest that originations of purchase mortgages have been held back by potential borrowers’ debt-to-income ratios, which have increased along with rises in home prices. However, originations of purchase mortgages have increased in the past year as home prices have risen and it’s more than DTI ratios shutting certain borrowers out of the purchase market. Even though interest rates on mortgages remain at relatively low levels, housing affordability has been an increasing concern due to trends in home prices. Borrowers in parts of California, as well as Denver, Miami and Portland, could have difficulty qualifying for a purchase mortgage, according to a recent analysis by Zillow. Based on income, mortgage and home-value data for the fourth quarter of 2013, Zillow found...
Total consumer complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rose 34 percent year-over-year in the first quarter, but gripes about home mortgages fell 29.3 percent from year-ago levels, according to a new analysis by Inside the CFPB, an affiliated newsletter. The strong improvement from last year was driven largely by a 46.8 percent plunge in grievances about loan modifications. But complaints about servicing in general were up 21.4 percent from the first quarter of last year, while the other five mortgage-related categories were lower. Gripes having to do with loan application or other origination-related issues fell 26.7 percent from the first quarter of 2013. The number of gripes that were responded to in a timely manner fell...
During a recent webinar on MSR strategies, industry attorney Larry Platt of K&L Gates said he knows of “certain sales that have been held up for quite some time.” He noted: “You really can’t get a handle on what the cause of it is.”
The MBA said applications for purchase-mortgages with high loan balances have increased in recent months while applications for lower-balance mortgages has declined…
The first three months of 2014 represented the strongest quarterly ABS issuance number since the third quarter of 2009, when $53.27 billion of new deals were issued. It was up a modest 1.7 percent from the strong start in 2013.
Bad news for Nationstar and Ocwen? S&P said downgrades on servicer-advance ABS are possible because the analysis that accompanied ratings on certain deals didn’t consider subordinated interest amounts as part of the ratable promise.
Credit officers over the past three months reported an increased demand for non-agency MBS, suggesting that private capital could be flowing more freely through the U.S. housing market, according to a Federal Reserve survey released last week. The Fed’s Senior Credit Officer Opinion Survey on Dealer Financing Terms for March 2014 found little change in the credit terms among the 22 participating institutions, with the exception of securities financing, where nearly one-half of dealers reported a hike in demand for funding non-agency residential MBS. “Dealers assessed...