Earlier in the year, the IRS said it planned to strengthen the protections for e-services accounts by requiring a stronger identity verification process for existing and new accounts.
Guild Mortgage has partnered with FirstREX, a long-term investor in residential properties, in developing a downpayment program with a unique equity financing feature to help people buy larger homes while keeping their monthly mortgage payments low. Launched on Aug. 1, the FirstREX Homebuyer program allows FirstREX to contribute half of the 20 percent required for a Guild home-purchase loan. The 10 percent is an equity investment, not a loan, for which no ...
This week, Fannie Mae launched an initiative that guarantees to alleviate buyback fears on certain loan components for lenders using its underwriting and appraisal tools. Fannie will also automate key processes of verifying loans, including income, through Desktop Underwriter’s new validation service.Under Day 1 Certainty, Fannie said lenders would be relieved from most representations-and-warranty risk related to verifying a borrower’s income, assets and employment using DU. “Those are the big ones,” a Fannie spokesman told Inside The GSEs. He said, “It validates right there and they are good to go,” adding that this is the kind of innovation that helps makes possible programs like Quicken’s Rocket Mortgage.
The secondary market in transfers of agency mortgage servicing rights gained some momentum during the third quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis and ranking. A total of $94.96 billion of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae MSR connected to newly issued mortgage-backed securities changed hands during the third quarter. That was up 9.4 percent from the second quarter and represented the heaviest volume since ... [Includes two data charts]
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 ...
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