Former New Jersey politician John Leadbeater worked out a plea arrangement with prosecutors.

The eventual goal of the project is to have the GSEs issue fully interchangeable securities.

Verizon Wireless is preparing to package the payment plans on more than 3.09 million cell phones into an ABS, marking the first time an ABS in the U.S. will be backed by such collateral. The planned $1.17 billion Verizon Owner Trust 2016-1 received preliminary AAA ratings from Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s. “It’s the most interesting type of consumer ABS product we’ve seen in a long time,” said Darrell Wheeler, head of research for global structured finance at S&P. “And obviously, with the amount of phones in the market today, it has a lot of potential.” Analysts at Moody’s Investors Service noted...

A new fund has been created to encourage investments in the dwindling supply of single-family and multifamily affordable-housing options. Ten banks have contributed to the $25 million Community Development Fund since it opened in February. The fund will invest primarily in securities issued or guaranteed by the U.S. government or its agencies, and other investment grade fixed-income securities. In normal circumstances, the fund plans to invest at least 90 percent of its net assets in debt securities and other debt instruments that the fund’s advisor deems would qualify under the Community Reinvestment Act. Ken Thomas, president of Community Development Fund Advisors in Miami, set up...

Mortgage lenders delivered a hefty $218.29 billion of single-family mortgages into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of MBS disclosures made by the two government-sponsored enterprises. That was an increase of $45.32 billion over the first quarter, and 30.2 percent of the gain came from California, where total GSE loan sales jumped ... [Includes two data charts]

Lenders looking to boost refinance production as interest rates decline will be limited by the large number of borrowers who have already taken advantage of low rates in recent years, according to industry analysts. Applications for refis increased by 21.0 percent during the week of June 27, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, as interest rates declined with the United Kingdom’s vote to exit the European Union. The average interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate ...

More rigorous regulatory requirements and the resulting compliance efforts on the part of mortgage lenders might be increasing workloads and biting into profit levels, but they are also producing higher quality loans, which should pay off in lower losses and less litigation, according to one industry economist. “Better technology and standards in the loan application process combined with more time spent underwriting each loan application may be increasing the cost of ...

The mortgage lenders that will thrive in the future will be those that lead the market’s charge toward “frictionless” originations, according to a recent white paper from Oracle Financial Services, a division of the global technology provider. The key for lenders is to re-invent their processes and adopt digital-based customer-centric originations in order to improve efficiency, reduce cost and enhance the borrower experience.“The correlation between process and profitability is ...

For most of the year, it’s been an unpleasant ride for the nation’s mortgage insurers: Ugly share price performance, lower revenues (though not awful), and the fear that any day now the FHA might lower its premiums and cut into private MI market share. But over the past few weeks, policy winds in Washington have shifted with analysts rethinking the short-term prospects for the sector. According to a recent report from FBR & Co., “policy ... [Includes one data chart]

Great Britain’s exit from the European Union has triggered a drop in mortgage rates that will have significant effects on the U.S. mortgage market, according to a recent analysis by the Urban Institute. UI’s analysis attributed the mortgage-rate drop to a decline in the 10-year Treasury rate, which fell from 1.74 percent. The rate fell to 1.46 percent on the day after the vote. The more capital continues swarming toward the safety of 10-year T-notes, the lower rates would fall ...