The Mortgage Bankers Association notched a win for small, independent issuers after the Financial Accounting Standards Board agreed with the group’s position on the accounting of seriously delinquent loans in Ginnie Mae pools. At issue is whether companies that service pools with loans that are 90 days or more delinquent should put those loans on their balance sheet even if they have no intention of buying the loans out of the pool. According to the MBA, a Big Four accounting firm issued controversial guidance which would have been burdensome for small mortgage-backed securities issuers that have limited funding and no incentive or history of buying defective loans out of pools. After months of exchanges, FASB staff finally agreed with the MBA’s view that the decision process involves two steps. First, a loan must be 90 days or more delinquent and trigger ...

Overall, 2014 was not a good year for FHA originations as tight underwriting and high loan costs narrowed the band of borrowers able to qualify for an FHA-insured residential loan, according to an Inside FHA Lending analysis of agency data. FHA total endorsements dropped to $35.2 billion, an 8.1 percent drop in the fourth quarter from the previous quarter, with fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgages declining by 7.9 percent and 12.7 percent, respectively. FHA purchase originations suffered a decline of 11.3 percent. There was one bright spot: FHA refinances rose a meager 2.2 percent while the percentage of conventional loans that refinanced into FHA saw a more substantial lift of 13.0 percent quarter to quarter. FHA baseline lending (below $417,000) saw volume drop 8.4 percent in the fourth quarter. FHA jumbo loan amounts up to the statutory high-cost loan limit and ... [ 2 charts ]

In its 8-K filing with the SEC, Ocwen revealed that during 2014, state regulators commenced 46 examinations “of one or more of our areas of operation…”

Two Harbors is a member of the FHLB system via a captive insurance affiliate. The Federal Housing Finance Agency is contemplating snuffing out this avenue of membership...

Two Harbors, a REIT, has been aggregating, on average, $300 million of jumbo mortgages per month.

Ruth Lee, executive vice president of TCS, expects a big year in the scratch-and-dent market, thanks to the GSEs.

Prospect Mortgage is the top contributor with a 9.1 percent share, followed by Ditech Mortgage (8.6 percent) and Skyline Financial (7.1 percent). All three are nonbanks.

The repo is contingent upon PennyMac – a publicly traded REIT – maintaining minimum tangible net worth of $860 million and minimum unrestricted cash of $40 million.

Any monkeying with the GSE charters must get past two of the most powerful lobbying groups in all of housing finance...

Roughly 73 percent of the mortgages in the deal have interest-only terms.