There were no seismic shifts in the demographics of the mortgage-servicing business during the third quarter of 2017, although a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis revealed an unexpected decline in the total holdings of the top servicers and a shift in composition. The top five shops held a whopping $3.716 trillion of servicing on their books at the end of September, down 0.2 percent from the previous quarter. The only top-five servicer to ... [Includes two data charts]
In an attempt to help its smaller seller/servicers achieve better pricing on coissuance transactions, Fannie Mae will launch a new “Servicing Marketplace” designed as an upgrade to an existing program that some say was seldom used. The new platform allows sellers to choose a Fannie-approved coissuance servicer and commit to sell servicing rights at the same time they sell the loan into a Fannie mortgage-backed security. All transactions are on a bifurcated basis; that is, the seller is still ...
The possible sale of Nationstar Mortgage could have ramifications for a handful of other publicly traded nonbank mortgage firms, including Ocwen Financial, New Residential Investment Corp., and Walter Investment Management Corp. For now, Nationstar and its largest investor – Fortress Investment Corp. – are saying little about the matter, but it’s been widely reported the past week that SoftBank (soon to own Fortress) has hired investment bankers to explore a sale of ...
In a well-telegraphed move, federal regulators this week proposed reduced capital requirements for bank holdings of mortgage servicing assets, including mortgage servicing rights. The proposal issued late last week was part of an effort to “simplify” servicing-related capital requirements for all but the largest banks. The proposal would eliminate a 10 percent common equity tier 1 capital deduction threshold that currently applies to MSAs and certain other assets. Instead, a 25 percent deduction ...
One of the biggest takeaways for the mortgage industry in Republicans’ tax reform effort is that homeownership incentives provided by the mortgage interest deduction will be reduced significantly. Republican leaders have stressed that they don’t plan to eliminate the MID. But a near doubling of the standard deduction and other provisions included in tax reform will make the deduction worth much less, according to Leonard Burman, an institute fellow at the ...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac generated a combined $7.69 billion in net income during the third quarter of 2017, up significantly from the $4.86 billion in the second quarter, according to an Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of earnings reports released this week. Freddie’s earnings were unusually high at $4.67 billion thanks to a legal settlement with the Royal Bank of Scotland over non-agency mortgage-backed securities sold by the investment firm to the government-sponsored ...