Although the recent spike in rates spooked some players in the non-agency market, conduits like Redwood Trust and Credit Suisse are still in the hunt for new customers.
An FHA proposal for new legislative authority to transfer servicing has raised concerns among industry participants, particularly in the Ginnie Mae market. Authorizing the FHA to shift mortgage-servicing rights from one servicer to another could have a ripple effect on Ginnie Mae servicing rights and also adversely impact state mortgage servicing and origination licenses, some say. The bottom line is that Congress should consider FHAs request for new statutory authority with great care, said Larry Platt, a compliance attorney and a partner at the Washington law firm K&L Gates. We would hope that ...
Deep-freezing the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage programs full-draw, fixed-rate standard product apparently has not diminished borrowers appetite for reverse mortgages as indicated by a significant increase in HECM originations in the first quarter of 2013. FHA endorsements under the HECM program surged 36.2 percent during the first three months of 2013, with lenders reporting $3.84 billion at the end of the quarter, according to Inside FHA Lendings analysis of FHA data. Volume was also up a modest 5.3 percent from the same period a year ago. The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the ... [1 chart]
The Securities and Exchange Commission and defendants in civil lawsuits will have to face the harsher realities of an open-ended policy change requiring defendants in certain civil lawsuits to admit guilt as a condition for settlement, say legal experts. There is apparently a consensus among industry attorneys that it will be difficult for the SEC to determine when to apply the new policy and to which cases. In addition, there is also the question of whether the SEC will have the discipline to reject a huge settlement and avoid the expense and uncertainty of a drawn-out trial, just so it could get an admission of guilt by a corporate defendant. According to global law firm DLA Piper, SEC Chairman Mary Jo White recently notified...
The recent rapid rise in interest rates has some market participants talking about margin calls on MBS investors, but so far all the chatter appears to be speculative although there still could be red ink out there, somewhere. At press time, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury had stabilized at 2.54 percent. In mid-May the rate was 1.70 percent. Thats a run-up of 84 basis points. One secondary market official told...