The last time private MIs did more business than either the FHA or the VA was back in the first quarter of 2008. At that point, however, private MIs accounted for well over half of primary MI new business.
The frothy prices being offered for MSRs are beginning to cool somewhat. “There’s definitely a tighter range on bids lately,” said Matt Maurer, managing director of MountainView Servicing Group.
Many mortgage originators and aggregators say they would use some form of recording, either audio or audio/video, to help with QM compliance and fighting potential lawsuits.
Spencer Stuart, a search firm working for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has talked to a top official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about being the CEO of the fledgling Common Securitization Solutions platform project, Inside The GSEs has learned. The candidate for the CEO job is Peter Carroll, who currently serves as assistant director for mortgage markets at the CFPB.
Despite this year’s implementation of a new Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac representations-and-warranties framework that promises repurchase relief with a three-year sunset on liability, the GSEs still hold all the cards and a very big stick when it comes to lenders managing their buyback risks, according to an expert during an exclusive Inside Mortgage Finance webinar this week. Jonathan Jaffe, a partner at the law firm of K&L Gates, told webinar participants that Fannie’s and Freddie’s hyper-aggressive enforcement of their repurchase options and frequently updated rules creates a near constant state of uncertainty for lenders who have been made all too aware that too much buyback resistance could result in them being on the wrong end of a “nuclear” exchange.
Freddie Mac’s “account balance” with the U.S. Treasury will go into the black by yearend – thanks to stellar third-quarter earnings – and Fannie Mae likely will accomplish the same by the end of March 2014. But mortgage bankers shouldn’t pop any champagne. That’s the view of Dave Stevens, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association who worked at Freddie once and also served as FHA commissioner. Stevens believes that despite their strong performance in the third quarter and beyond, both are just “insurance brokers” that have benefitted from the Federal Reserve buying their mortgage-backed securities. [Includes one data chart.]
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this week reported a combined $3.53 billion of mortgage repurchases and other buyback resolutions during the third quarter of 2013, the lowest quarterly amount in three years, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. Buyback resolutions declined by 28.2 percent from the second quarter, even as the government-sponsored enterprises wrapped up large-scale settlements with a handful of their largest sellers. Fannie and Freddie so far this year ... [Includes one data chart]
Three major special servicers are grappling with growth issues as they compete for servicing portfolios and work to establish origination platforms. Nationstar Mortgage, Ocwen Financial and Walter Investment Management all posted lower income in the third quarter of 2013 compared with the previous quarter. Nationstar announced this week that it is downsizing its servicing sites and plans to sell its non-core broker and distributed retail origination channels to Stonegate Mortgage ... [Includes one data chart]
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