Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt said access to credit and supporting underserved markets will be among the goals outlined for the GSEs next year. Although the FHFA will not release a 2017 GSE scorecard until yearend, Watt, speaking at this week’s annual Mortgage Bankers Association convention in Boston, offered a preview of what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will focus on in the coming year. Watt said he expects the GSEs to ramp up research efforts to increase responsible access to credit and affordable housing. He said the average credit scores for GSE purchase loans remain historically high. “Based on the work they have already done and this additional research, we’ll be asking them to...

Publicly traded banks reported strong gains in mortgage-banking income during the third quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings releases. A diverse group of 26 banks that includes all the top lender-servicers and a number of regional players reported a combined $3.853 billion in mortgage-banking profits for the third quarter of 2016. That was up 23.5 percent from the previous period, and it was the strongest quarterly showing ... [Includes one data chart]

So far, the third quarter has seen several publicly traded commercial banks mark up the asset value of their residential mortgage servicing rights, but in general, the increases have been mild, to say the least. The only bank that reported a sizeable increase was Bank of America, which valued its MSR portfolio at 60 basis points at Sept. 30, an increase of 9 bps from mid-year. Of the reporting banks, BofA’s improvement has been the largest by far. BofA’s megabank competitor ...

Borrower retention – convincing a borrower to take a mortgage with their existing lender when the time comes for a new mortgage – can increase the value of servicing a new mortgage by 1.5 times to 3.0 times, according to calculations by Strategic Mortgage Finance Group. Matt Lind, a senior partner at Stratmor, came to that conclusion when considering the value of customer retention beyond trying to glean insight from the market price of servicing used in correspondent ...

The first-time homebuyer share of home purchases has declined significantly in recent months, according to the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. First-time homebuyers had a 34.8 percent share of purchases in September, based on a three-month moving average. That was the lowest share for first-time homebuyers since August 2014. The first-timer share has declined for four consecutive months, from 40.4 percent in May. Both current homeowners ...

Some leading mortgage technology vendors told the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau they are concerned about the resources that will be required to implement the changes the bureau wants to make to its integrated disclosure rule known as TRID. In a comment letter to the CFPB regarding its proposed rule to clarify a number of aspects of the TRID regulation, the Mortgage Vendor Regulatory Work Group raised concerns about software implementation resources, including ...

Nonbanks crossed a key threshold during 3Q16: Among the top 50 lenders, nonbanks accounted for 51.4 percent of 3Q originations – the first time these lenders grabbed more than half of the market…

“The opportunity for this group to qualify for mortgage loans is growing,” said Experian.

Ocwen funded $1.2 billion in “forward” mortgages and an additional $213 million of reverse loans. In 2Q16 it funded $1.32 billion.

This past summer, Arch agreed to buy United Guaranty, the market leader in the MI space.