Nationstar Mortgage announced this week that it agreed to purchase $113 billion in non-agency mortgage servicing rights, as measured by unpaid principal balance, from Bank of America. The sale will more than double Nationstar’s non-agency servicing portfolio. Some $102 billion in agency mortgages are included in the sale, which priced at $1.3 billion. Walter Investment Management concurrently announced the purchase of $93 billion of unpaid principal balance in Fannie Mae-backed servicing assets from BofA. Ocwen Financial also reportedly bid...

Redwood Trust is set to issue its first non-agency jumbo mortgage-backed security of the year, a portion of which will include ARMs and significant contributions from EverBank. The real estate investment trust said it is close to being able to issue one non-agency MBS a month this year, up from six in all of 2012. Sequoia Mortgage Trust 2013-1 largely includes characteristics common to other recent Redwood deals, including 7.30 percent credit enhancement for the two tranches set to receive AAA ratings from Fitch Ratings, Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Moody’s Investors Service. However, ARMs have not been included in a Redwood deal since a January 2012 issuance. ARMs will account...

Bank and thrift holdings of home-equity loans declined by 2.5 percent in the third quarter of 2012 compared with the previous quarter, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database. A significant portion of the holdings remain in a negative equity position, though overall homeowner equity increased in the past year. Banks and thrifts reported $1.11 trillion in total HEL business at the end of the third quarter of 2012, including home-equity lines of credit and closed-end second mortgages held in portfolio, and unused HELOC commitments. The $103.36 billion in CES holdings in the third quarter of 2012 was down 5.8 percent from the previous quarter. Cristian de Ritis, a senior director of consumer credit economics at Moody’s Analytics, said...[Includes one data chart]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week issued a final rule setting new restrictions and requirements for high-cost mortgages. The rule implements requirements set by the Dodd-Frank Act and will take effect in January 2014. For first-lien mortgages, high-cost loans have annual percentage rates 6.5 percentage points or more above the average prime offer rate. The APR threshold for second liens is 8.5 percent above the APOR. The DFA expanded the definition of high-cost mortgages to include purchase mortgages and home-equity lines of credit in addition to refinances. The CFPB noted...

An $8.5 billion settlement this week between federal regulators and 10 servicers included a large portion of non-agency mortgages. Servicers with significant non-agency holdings were also left out of the settlement, though federal regulators said they are still working toward a deal with those companies. The settlement applies to foreclosures initiated in 2009 and 2010. Non-agency mortgages had much higher foreclosure rates than other mortgage types during that time. Aurora, Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife Bank, PNC, Sovereign, SunTrust, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo agreed...

Servicers handling portfolio loans and non-agency mortgages continue to increase their use of principal reduction loan modifications, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Some 23,335 principal reduction mods were completed in the third quarter, up from 11,178 in the third quarter of 2011 and from 14,944 in the second quarter of 2012. The mods accounted...[Includes four briefs]

A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has overturned a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit accusing the Department of Housing and Urban Development of denying protection for surviving spouses of deceased principal borrowers of reverse mortgages against ejection due to foreclosure. The case, Robert Bennett, et al. v. Shaun Donovan, revealed an apparent inconsistency between HUD regulations and the federal statute that created the FHA’s Home Equity Conversion Mortgage Program. This inconsistency was at the root of the district court’s previous decision to dismiss plaintiffs’ claim for lack of standing, which the ...

Residential Capital, a former subsidiary of Ally and currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, has asked the court for permission to sell an estimated $130 million in FHA-insured mortgage loans. ResCap made the request in a recent filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, which monitors and approves all of the beleaguered company’s activities and requests during bankruptcy. According to the company, its unsecured creditors have signed off on the prospective sale of the FHA loans although the court would still have to approve the request during a scheduled hearing on Jan. 16. ResCap sought bankruptcy protection on ...

The agency residential MBS market expanded for the third consecutive quarter during the three months ending in September, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. A total of $5.39 trillion of single-family MBS issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae were outstanding as of the end of the third quarter of 2012. That was up by a scant 0.2 percent from the previous period, although it was still 0.4 percent below the level at the same time in 2011. Both Ginnie (2.1 percent) and Fannie (0.6 percent) posted...[Includes two data charts]

Merrill Lynch over the past few months has been in the market actively buying jumbo mortgages and is also looking for an executive to manage its correspondent purchases, secondary market officials told Inside MBS & ABS. These officials, who spoke under the condition their names not be used, said they anticipate that Merrill, a Bank of America company, is gathering product for an eventual jumbo security. A spokesman for Merrill declined to discuss the matter, saying, “We don’t comment on our plans.” Shellpoint Partners, a company affiliated with MBS market pioneer Lewis Ranieri, is...