Only a trace amount – 0.5 percent – of unresolved buyback cases were related to loans purchased by the GSEs before 2009.

For many depositories, there’s a significant mismatch between their reported mortgage banking income and what’s on their call reports…

Mortgage lenders selling loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had to repurchase fewer defective loans in the second quarter of 2018, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. GSE sellers repurchased $226.84 million of home loans during the second quarter or provided some other form of indemnification. That was down 5.8 percent from the first three months of the year and represented the lowest quarterly buyback total since the fourth quarter of 2016. Freddie repurchases were up 5.3 percent from the first quarter, while Fannie’s fell 17.6 percent. On a year-to-date basis, combined GSE buybacks were down 7.2 percent from the first half of 2017. Again, Fannie volume was down, Freddie’s was up.

Rising interest rates continue to benefit the Federal Home Loan Banks whose net income was up by more than 10 percent for the first half of the year, according to a report released this week by Moody’s Investors Service. FHLBank net income was $1.83 billion in the first six months of 2018, up from the $1.67 billion a year earlier. This reflected a 10.45 percent increase that was driven by growth in net interest income, partially offset by lower non-interest income. Moody’s noted that yields on both advances and liabilities increased because of higher interest rates. Overall, the net interest margin improved nine basis points to 0.47 percent from the same period in 2017.

Commercial banks and savings institutions generated $4.26 billion in mortgage-banking income during the second quarter of 2018, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call reports. Second-quarter net income from mortgage production, loan sales and servicing was down 1.0 percent from the first three months of the year. But through the first six months of 2018, the industry’s mortgage banking income was up 18.8 percent from ... [Includes one data chart]

Loans originated in the retail channel and delivered into agency mortgage-backed securities continued to show a lower risk profile than mortgages acquired from correspondent originators or funded through mortgage brokers, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of MBS data. The average credit score for retail originations was 727.27 in second-quarter agency MBS, 6.47 points higher than the average for correspondent loans and ... [Includes two data charts]

Privately held mortgage firms looking to raise capital by selling stock to the public face a grim reality these days, but alternatives still exist, namely private placement deals. Case in point is RoundPoint Mortgage, Charlotte, NC, the nation’s 15th largest subservicing vendor. Earlier this week, RoundPoint completed a $94 million capital raise accomplished through the sale of convertible preferred stock. The investor in the private placement was not identified. The company ...

After losing an average of $118 per loan originated in the first quarter of 2018, nonbanks made some adjustments and turned profits in the second quarter, according to a survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Some 343 nonbanks reported a net gain of $580 on each loan they originated in 2Q18. After an exceptionally weak start to the year, production profitability improved in the second quarter as volume picked up from the spring home buying season,” said Marina Walsh ...

As residential lending goes, so goes the fortunes of the Mortgage Bankers Association, the residential finance industry’s largest trade organization. MBA saw its revenues decline by 8.2 percent to $62.0 million in fiscal 2017 as its investment income plunged to $719,773 from $7.9 million the year prior, according to the trade group’s form 990 tax return. MBA’s “profit” (revenue less expenses) declined by 33.5 percent in FY 2017 to $12.7 million, a drop of $6.5 million ...

Increases to interest rates on mortgages are prompting changes in the types of refinances that are being originated. The cash-out share of refi business is increasing and credit quality is declining, according to an analysis by CoreLogic. Frank Nothaft, an executive and chief economist at CoreLogic, projects that the cash-out share of refi business will be near 40.0 percent this year. He said that would be the highest share for cash-out refis since 2005. In 2017, around 25.0 percent of refis ...