“The greater comfort that banks have in the current regulatory environment has situated them as more potential buyers of mortgage servicing product than was the case several years ago,” Fitch Ratings said.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac released quality control measures to their customers last week that they said will increase transparency and help lenders reduce the amount of problematic loans. Both GSEs are more open to repurchase alternatives and have witnessed a decrease in the number of deficient loans.“Mortgages today are certainly of the highest quality as validated by our QC reviews,” Freddie noted in the letter. Since 2013, the defect rate of a random sampling of performing loans has been 1.4 percent, its lowest, even as the level of QC files increased. Fannie said that the quality of originations has improved, resulting in fewer loans being deemed ineligible by the GSE. As of the end of 2014, 0.33 percent of the single-family loans....
While creating the largest Federal Home Loan Bank in the system, both geographically and membership wise, about 75 percent of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle workforce will be laid off due to a merger with the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines. The merger, approved in December by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, officially goes into effect in June, trimming the Seattle bank’s workforce to just 35 employees in the regional office. About 109 employees will be laid off before 2015 ends. Both banks unanimously approved the merger and said it will result in a cooperative that is stronger than either bank on an individual basis. Once combined, the bank will be headquartered in Des Moines.
Mortgage brokers played an increasingly important role in the conventional conforming market during the first quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Mortgage brokers were responsible for $23.8 billion of single-family mortgages securitized by the two government-sponsored enterprises during the first three months of this year. That was up 16.0 percent ... [Includes two data charts]
The vibrant market in mortgage-servicing rights challenges originators to figure out the best execution for the receivables they’ve created and for both sides of a servicing deal to make sure the transfer goes smoothly, according to industry experts. Nitin Dave, vice president for securitization and servicing at Southern Trust Mortgage, during a recent MSR conference sponsored by Information Management Network, noted that the market has become more dynamic as ...
RSS