While working to establish a jumbo whole loan conduit, PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust has been able to turn profits by investing in distressed mortgages. The real-estate investment trust avoided purchases of mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2011 and increased its profits due to...

The consent orders agreed to recently by 14 mortgage servicers and two third-party service providers will have little impact on the servicing of FHA loans, according to compliance experts. The only areas where the orders might create additional obligations are requirements that the servicer establish a...

A provision in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act allowing federal agencies that insure mortgage loans to develop rules defining “qualified mortgages” (QM) for their loans may not be ideal for investors, according to industry attorneys. In addition to a recent Federal Reserve proposed rule on ability to repay ...

Wall Street analysts said it is unlikely banks will take losses on repurchased delinquent FHA mortgage loans, easing fears that FHA may not fully reimburse those losses due to servicing errors. Commenting on a report challenging banks’ policy of accruing interest on delinquent FHA loans, analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said ...

Issuers may now choose between two methods of compensating servicers of securities backed by Home Equity Conversion Mortgages under a new policy change announced recently by Ginnie Mae. The choices are either a monthly flat servicing fee of 6-to-75 basis points or ...

Ginnie Mae servicing continued to show strong growth as it posted a 4.0 percent jump in the first quarter of 2011 from the previous quarter and an overall 19.3 percent increase from the same period last year. The top 50 Ginnie servicers reported $1.11 trillion of single-family mortgage debt outstanding at the end of the... [Includes one data chart]

Ginnie Mae tightened several regulations relating to its mortgage-backed securities program over the last month as its MBS issuance hit a two-year low in early 2011. Ginnie All Participants Memo 11-04 changed rules that had allowed servicers to include delinquent loans into Ginnie pools. The memo told...[Includes one data chart]

The current method of paying servicers could stand to be improved, but regulators and secondary market investors need to bear in mind that change would have ripple effects throughout the industry, according to a new analysis by Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp., a consulting firm based in New York. “Changing the servicing fee from its current form may...

Non-agency mortgage-backed securities investors do not have enough confidence to allow for accelerated reform of the government-sponsored enterprises, according to Michael Berman, chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “The key is the private markets have spoken that they don’t have confidence,” Berman said last week in...

In what may be an omen of a deeper slide of volume in the months to come, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw their issuance of new mortgage-backed securities drop 21.4 percent in the first quarter of the year from the prior period, the latest data from the Inside Mortgage Finance GSE MarketScope show...[includes one full-page chart]