People get discouraged from taking mortgage loan modifications that are in their best interest by countless paperwork steps and little support from servicers, according to a Harvard University behavioral economist who says he has a solution. Piyush Tantia, the executive director of ideas42, a nonprofit behavioral economics research and development lab at Harvard, has been experimenting with how people respond to foreclosure. Behavioral economics blends psychology and economics to analyze and predict decisions based on how people actually behave. Tantia found that people often did not ...

Four separate research studies found that mortgage counseling dramatically helps homeowners who receive it, especially financially challenged owners, according to the Homeownership Preservation Foundation. The studies show that counseling increases the likelihood that a homeowner will be granted a loan modification by 200 percent. Borrowers who accept counseling also receive better terms on loan modifications compared to those who don’t get counseling, with an average $110 lower monthly payment and an interest rate that’s ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recorded significant declines in the volume of single-family mortgages they securitized during the second quarter of 2011, according to a new analysis and ranking based on the Inside Mortgage Finance GSE MarketScope. The two government-sponsored enterprises generated a combined $155.0 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities during the second quarter, down a hefty 40.6 percent from the first three months of the year. It was the slowest quarter in Fannie/Freddie MBS output since the final three months of 2008, the low ... [includes 3 data charts]

Tradeweb claims its Round Robin functionality has curbed trade failures in the to be announced mortgage market to the tune of $166 billion since it was introduced in November. First, the service has reduced the “round robin” risk; that is, the risk associated with a chain of matched fails that frequently becomes a closed loop. The new technology enables institutional clients to pair-off TBA mortgage pool transactions with dealers, which reduces...

Morgan Keegan, a brokerage subsidiary of Regions Financial, agreed to pay $200 million last week to settle fraud charges related to subprime mortgage-backed securities. The settlement was reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission, state regulators and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The regulators accused Morgan Keegan of causing the false valuation of subprime MBS in five funds managed by Morgan Asset Management from January to July 2007. The settlement also states...

FHA jumbo originations took a 32.2 percent tumble during the first quarter of 2011 yet remained strong enough when combined with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s jumbo numbers to beat non-agency jumbo originations for the quarter, according to a new Inside FHA Lending ranking and analysis. FHA, Fannie and Freddie accounted for $26.15 billion, or 15.7 percent, of all jumbo loans – those exceeding $417,000 – originated in the first quarter, compared to $25.0 billion in new non-agency jumbo loans produced during the same period, data from Inside Mortgage Finance show. During the first quarter, FHA jumbo production fell to... [Includes two data charts]

Ginnie Mae has agreed to issuer requests for changes regarding the collection and reporting of new pool data to provide clearer and more transparent information to investors. The changes were announced during a webinar with program participants in connection with eight new data elements on all single-family forward mortgages, which issuers are required to provide on all submissions beginning Sept. 1. Ginnie Mae announced the new requirements in APM 11-05, along with a new file layout that would accommodate the new data elements. The new data fields will show the following: combined loan-to-value ratio percent; total debt expense ratio...

The FHA’s mortgage insurance portfolio continues to improve despite lingering uncertainty in housing prices, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s latest quarterly report to Congress. HUD gave the FHA Single-Family Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund a cautious thumbs up in its FY 2011 second-quarter report as the fund surpassed earlier actuarial forecasts halfway through the fiscal year. There was mostly encouraging news from several fronts. HECM endorsements were up 12 percent during the quarter and 2 percent on a year-over-year basis. Forward mortgage loans endorsements, which totaled 285,725, were down 23 percent from...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau isn’t wasting any time in moving forward with its “know before you owe” integrated mortgage disclosure project. Late last week, it released highlights of the thousands of comments it received from the first round of its disclosure prototypes, and early this week it issued a second set of forms for public comment, this time focusing on borrower payments or fees necessary to close a mortgage. In the first round of prototypes (dubbed “Ficus Bank” and “Pecan Bank”), the back page was the same on both versions, whereas the front page ...

Although the dollar volume of MBS and ABS deals rated by Standard & Poor’s in the first quarter was down from the same period in 2010, the company ranked as the top rating service in both markets, according to a new analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. S&P rated $5.80 billion of non-agency MBS during the first quarter, down 61 percent from its volume in early 2010. But that amounted to 66 percent of total issuance in the market – more than any of its competitors. Overall non-agency MBS issuance was down 50 percent from year-ago levels. Moody’s Investor Services ranked second with $4.5 billion in rated MBS, just over half of the market in... [Includes one data chart]