Commercial banks and savings institutions reported a sharp decline in mortgage-banking income during the first quarter of 2016, according to a new analysis of call-report data by Inside Mortgage Trends. In aggregate, banks earned $3.31 billion on mortgage banking during the first quarter. That was down 26.8 percent from the previous period and it marked the lowest quarterly profit in nearly five years. Back in the second quarter of 2011 ... [Includes one data chart]

Private investors – and even some public ones – are maintaining a strong interest in nonagency/nonprime lenders as well as “fix-and-flip” financers, but that doesn’t always mean raising capital is easy. California Capital Real Estate Advisors, or CALCAP, has been trying to raise $100 million since late last year, but recently ended talks with an investor based in San Francisco, said company principal Mark Mozilo. Mozilo, though, hardly seems worried, telling Inside Mortgage Trends ...

Battered by a landslide of new regulations and the aftermath of an historic meltdown in the housing market, the mortgage industry also faces a dramatic shift in market demand from demographic changes and new generational attitudes. Although the overall U.S. homeownership rate has been sinking, the ownership rate for Hispanics actually went up in the fourth quarter of last year, said Marisa Calderon, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals ...

Commercial banks and thrifts boosted their combined holdings of residential MBS to a new record, $1.661 trillion, during the first quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. The data include held-to-maturity and available-for-sale accounts, but not trading assets, which included another $45.99 billion of residential MBS as of the end of March. The banking industry’s MBS holdings in HTM/AFS portfolios rose 1.0 percent from the end of 2015, and they were up a substantial 5.2 percent from a year ago. It’s worth noting that total assets in the banking industry actually rose a bit faster, by 2.1 percent, dropping the MBS share of total assets down slightly to 10.2 percent. Unlike some quarters, when activity by one or two dominant banks accounts for most of the industry’s change, the first-quarter increase was...[Includes two data tables]

Portfolio lending remains a more viable option than securitization for lenders in the non-agency mortgage market in part because of the depth and variety of funding sources that allow them to offer a wide range of products. Depository institutions rely heavily on low-cost retail deposits to fund their retained mortgage portfolios, according to panelists speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association secondary market conference in New York this week. A typical customer of ...

One of the biggest factors limiting the issuance of jumbo mortgage-backed securities is the strong appetite banks have to hold jumbos in portfolio. Redwood Trust, which aims to issue jumbo MBS, had adapted by competing with banks and working with them. Redwood had a gross margin of 140 basis points on its jumbo business in the first quarter of 2016, much higher than the 59 basis points in gross margins on jumbos Redwood had in the full year of 2015 ...

For the issuance of mortgage-backed securities with non-qualified mortgages to take off, industry analysts suggest that banks need to play a larger role. To this point, nonbanks have been the only issuers of non-QM MBS. Ron D’Vari and Timothy Bernstein, analysts at New Oak, authored an overview of non-QM MBS issued in the latest issue of The Journal of Structured Finance, which was published this month. The analysts said real estate investment trusts and hedge funds ...

FHA activity was lackluster in the first three months of 2016 as loan originations fell 7.8 percent from the prior quarter, according to Inside FHA/VA Lending’s analysis of agency data. The weak first-quarter production of $53.5 billion appeared to continue a trend from 2015, which saw the fourth quarter close with $58.1 billion, down significantly from $73.7 billion in the third quarter. In contrast, FHA originations fared better year-over year. Loan production was up 35.6 percent in the first quarter compared to the same period last year. Purchase lending totaled $36.5 billion in the first three months with overall production trending downward during the period. Borrowers in the 640-679 and 680-719 credit score ranges made up the bulk of new endorsements for January and February, the latest FHA data show. It is unlikely that trend will change even if March endorsements were added. Between all ... [ 2 charts ]

Recent circuit court rulings may bolster FHA lenders’ defense against the government’s heavy use of the False Claims Act in FHA lending cases, according to industry attorneys. In the years following the financial crisis, the Department of Justice and the relators bar have used the FCA aggressively to target banks and nonbank mortgage lenders for losses incurred by FHA due to poor underwriting and false certifications. The DOJ and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have recovered billions of dollars through settlements with various mortgage lenders and servicers, using increasingly creative theories of liability to hold them responsible for FHA losses. This week, the DOJ filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, DC, accusing Guild Mortgage of improper origination and underwriting of FHA-insured mortgage loans from January 2006 through December 2011. As in ...

Trade groups representing lenders, homebuilders and appraisers have asked Congress to hold a hearing this year on the future of appraisal regulation.In a joint letter, five industry groups urged the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs to reevaluate oversight of the appraisal industry and the current federal regulatory structure for real estate appraisal.The committee last held an appraisal oversight hearing in 2004. Federal appraisal regulations have been untouched since the enactment of the Federal Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, the trade groups noted. In addition, the groups asked that both federal and state responsibilities be reassessed to see if they continue to serve consumers and market participants well, as well as promote competition in the marketplace. In addition to federal regulation, states regulate appraisers as well. The groups want to know from Congress whether federal oversight of appraisers is still necessary.