Some of the features of the Private Mortgage Insurance Eligibility Requirements recently put out by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Finance Agency would probably increase costs and cyclicality in the mortgage and housing markets to an unnecessary degree, according to a new report by Moody’s Analytics and the Urban Institute. Study authors Mark Zandi and Cristian deRitis (Moody’s) and Jim Parrott (the Urban Institute) said the standards should succeed in ensuring that ...

The Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Agency has some sage advice for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: the next time you suspect one of your seller/servicers is up to no good, tell their rival and their regulator. This type of wisdom – and more – is contained in a recent IG post-mortem report on one of the most spectacular mortgage failures of the past decade: Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, a large nonbank that collapsed in the late summer of 2009 after it was discovered ...

Late last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced the participants in its high-profile eClosing pilot project. The bureau chose a mix of technology vendors providing eClosing solutions and lenders that have contracted to close loans using those solutions. The vendor participants are Accenture Mortgage Cadence, DocMagic, eLynx, Pavaso, and PiersonPatterson LLP. The lenders are Blanco National Bank, Boeing Employees Credit Union, Franklin First Financial, Flagstar Bank ...

Homeownership among young adults under age 35 has dropped substantially, particularly among prime first-time homebuyers, despite the fact that owning a house has become less costly than renting in recent years, according to a Fannie Mae analysis. Specifically, the government-sponsored enterprise found that the homeownership rate of “prime” first-time homebuyers – defined as educated, married couples in their early 30s with kids and lots of money – fell by 8.6 percent between 2006 and 2012 ...

Banks and thrifts reported an 11.0 percent decline in the volume of mortgage repurchases and indemnifications they made during the second quarter of 2014, compared to the first three months of the year. An Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data found that bank and thrift repurchases and indemnifications totaled $1.012 billion in the second quarter, the lowest level since the first quarter of 2008. Buyback volume has been ... [Includes one data chart]

When it comes to new originations, the laggard in the government-insured group has been the FHA program.

Commercial banks and residential mortgages: is the great love affair over? Yes, says Kroll.

Freddie Mac could save millions of dollars a year in faulty reimbursement payouts to its servicers by investing additional resources in a wider selection of reviews, according to an audit issued last week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General. In 2013, Freddie reimbursed 460 of its servicers $1.4 billion but identified and denied $126 million in what the IG calls “erroneous” claims. The IG noted that Freddie’s top 10 servicers, relative to total reimbursements, accounted for 87 percent of all reimbursements made by Freddie in 2013. Servicers of Freddie and Fannie Mae loans often maintain...

Banks’ mortgage banking efforts through two quarters in 2014 pale in comparison to the first half of last year, though income and other metrics improved in the second quarter, according to an analysis of call report data by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter. Banks had a total of $4.91 billion in mortgage banking income in the second quarter, up 45.5 percent from the first three months of the year. However, mortgage banking income was well below levels seen in the first half of 2013, before the most recent refinance boom ground to a halt. Banks had...