A proposal from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to establish margin requirements for the to-be-announced MBS market was met with strong opposition from industry participants. While FINRA made some concessions to the industry in the proposal issued in October, many MBS traders warned of dire consequences if the proposed margin requirements take effect. The proposal from FINRA included a number of provisions, such as a 2.0 percent “maintenance” margin ...

Commercial banks and savings institutions reported a hefty decline in mortgage-banking income from the second to the third quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. The banking industry earned $3.793 billion from mortgage banking during the third quarter, a 37.7 percent decline from the previous three-month period. That’s an even bigger drop than the 25.8 percent decline reported by the group of 34 ... [Includes one data chart]

When you hold an earnings call and not one analyst shows up to ask a question, one of two things is going on: business is so good that no one needs to ask, or research firms have dropped your stock. The latter appears to be the case with Altisource Asset Management Corp., one of three publicly-traded companies that can trace its lineage to Ocwen Financial Corp., a once top-five ranked servicer that’s in the process of shrinking, deleveraging its balance sheet and trying to figure out ...

Mortgage customer satisfaction has improved this year compared to the previous year as lenders adopted new digital technology and improved efficiency, according to the J.D. Power 2015 U.S. Primary Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Survey. Overall customer satisfaction with the mortgage process averaged 793 in 2015, up 7 points from 2014. Customers expressed a high degree of satisfaction – a 22-point gain from the previous year – with the speed of the loan process ...

Current readings from the house price-to-rent ratio point to the potential for a bubble in the housing market, according to John Williams, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. “I am starting to see signs of imbalances emerge in the form of high asset prices, especially in real estate, and that trips the alert system,” Williams said in a speech this month. He noted that the house price-to-rent ratio is close to where it was in 2003, and home prices continue to increase ...

Repurchases and indemnifications by banks and thrifts fell to “just” $936.0 million in the third quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank call-report data. That was the lowest quarterly buyback figure for the industry since the first quarter of 2008, when banks began disclosing this activity in their call reports. The third-quarter repurchase total was down 17.9 percent from the previous three-month period. On a ... [Includes one data chart]

Selling mortgage servicing rights into a declining interest rate environment can be tough sledding, but now that rates have headed north again, advisors that play in the space are anticipating strong sales through the fourth quarter and into the early months of 2016. “In the third quarter, we saw a number of large deals and even a handful of $500 million deals that just didn’t get done,” said Stephen Harris, managing director of MIAC Capital Markets. Harris also pointed out a ...

Although loanDepot’s multi-million dollar initial public offering is off the table for now, the privately held nonbank is expected to test the market some time again – it’s just a matter of when. The deal was scuttled late last week, after questions were raised about how the company was valuing itself in the IPO documents. Another sidebar was the revelation in the S-1 filing that Chief Financial Officer Jon Frojen had resigned just weeks before loanDepot’s stock was slated to trade. In the S-1, loanDepot tries to dispel the notion that Frojen’s resignation had anything to do with the IPO, saying the change was made by management prior to the

As the housing market witnessed its best year yet in terms of recovering from the financial crisis, reports are pointing to continued progress in 2016, albeit at a slower pace. Pent-up demand coupled with sustained job growth and rising home values encouraged homeowners to put their homes on the market, a trend that Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, said he expects to continue into 2016. “Sales activity in 2016 will once again be ...

Mortgage lenders are more willing to expand the credit box for FHA borrowers, but they appear to be getting more cautious about FHA lending, according to a new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities data. Over two thirds of FHA loans securitized in the first nine months of 2015 had credit scores below 700, and 6.2 percent of them had scores of 620 or lower. By comparison, 47.0 percent of VA loans were below 700 and just 4.4 percent were in the lowest category. But FHA lenders became more cautious as the year wore on. In the first quarter, 6.8 percent of FHA loans had scores of 620 or lower. That fell to just 6.0 percent in the third quarter. The FHA purchase-mortgage sector skews even further away from the riskiest borrowers and toward safer ground. The share of FHA purchase loans with scores of 620 or lower fell from 5.8 percent in the first ... [ 2 charts ]