With interest rates rising again, the future looks somewhat cloudy for real estate investment trusts that invest in MBS, a situation that investors have grown accustomed to the past few years. According to figures compiled by Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, the 28 mortgage investing REITs tracked by the firm had a combined market capitalization rate of $47.8 billion at the end of May, a slight drop from a year ago when the tally was $49.0 billion. Then again, not all of the 28 are...

An increase in mortgage origination volume helped lenders increase earnings from loan production and secondary market activities during the first quarter of 2015, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. A diverse group of large and mid-sized companies reported a total of $1.910 billion in net earnings from their loan origination and marketing activities during the first three months of the year. That was up 20.1 percent from the ... [Includes two data charts]

Commercial banks and thrifts – most of them – continued their years-long retreat from the mortgage servicing rights market during the first quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call reports. Banks serviced a total of $4.282 trillion of home mortgages for other investors as of the end of March. That was down $134.2 billion, or 3.0 percent, from the fourth quarter. Compared to a year ago, bank mortgage servicing ... [Includes one data chart]

Small and mid-sized independent mortgage bankers have key decisions to make about secondary market strategies and what to do with the mortgage servicing rights they create through originations, and experts say there isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy. In secondary marketing, lenders that have become Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac approved sellers typically start out at the cash window, said Philip Rasori, chief operations officer at Mortgage Capital Trading ...

The past few weeks haven’t been particularly good for Nationstar Mortgage: Two top executives – including President and Chief Operating Officer Harold Lewis – announced their sudden retirements, and a handful of law firms accused the nonbank of making false statements about its financial condition. Achieving class action status on shareholder lawsuits can be a long and difficult road, but in general, investors in the nation’s largest nonbank servicer aren’t ...

The supply of mortgage warehouse credit available in the market has grown as new players entered a field with subdued production through most of 2014, but usage rates have begun to climb. The amount of outstanding borrowing by mortgage lenders has increased by 150 percent over the past year, said Stanley Street, president of Street Resource Group, in a recent interview with Inside Mortgage Trends. His firm provides a software platform for warehouse lenders ...

For a company that was on the brink of death seven years ago, Impac Mortgage Holdings is back and ready to take market share. In the first quarter of 2015, the California-based company reported a profit of $34.0 million, reversing a 4Q14 loss of $2.2 million and a $3.0 million loss from a year ago. Impac attributed the improved earnings to higher mortgage origination volume and the recognition of $24.4 million of deferred tax assets offset by losses on ...

Household debt has increased since mid-2013 at a faster rate than income, prompting concerns among some industry analysts. DBRS noted that while job market trends are likely to remain favorable, borrowers’ performance across many asset classes is expected to weaken in the next 12 months. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, household debt peaked in the fourth quarter of 2008 at $12.67 trillion. The debt measurement, which includes mortgages, student loans, auto loans, credit cards and other borrowing, fell to $11.15 trillion in the second quarter of 2013.

After a pilot jumbo mortgage loan program between the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago and Redwood Trust kicked off this quarter and expanded into a full roll-out beginning June 1, it was announced this week that the loan limit will just about double. The new single-family loan limit for the Mortgage Partnership Finance Direct program will increase from the current $729,750 to $1.5 million in the third quarter. The MPF Direct loan limit was raised primarily to help members that operate in urban or other areas where home prices are higher than the national average, said John Stocchetti, an executive vice president at the FHLB Chicago and group head of the MPF program.

In fact, 2014 was the first year since 2006 that purchase mortgages accounted for more than half of total residential originations.