Home-equity lending continued to grow during the third quarter of 2014 – in fact, it was the fastest-growing segment of the mortgage market – but depository institutions reported further declines in the unpaid balances of these assets on their balance sheets. Lenders funded an estimated $20 billion of new home-equity lines of credit during the third quarter, up 17.6 percent from the previous three-month period. That compared to a 9.8 percent increase in total mortgage originations during the period, and it was the best quarterly HEL production figure in five years, according to Inside Mortgage Finance estimates. Still, the supply of home-equity loans outstanding fell...[Includes three data charts]

Commercial banks and thrifts reported a seventh consecutive quarterly decline in mortgage purchases and indemnifications during the third quarter but still hold hefty amounts in reserves against future buybacks, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. Banks and thrifts reported $998.8 million in mortgage repurchases and indemnifications during the third quarter, down 1.3 percent from the second. It was also the lowest quarterly repurchase figure reported since ...

Mortgage banking profitability declined in the third quarter despite an uptick in net income on servicing, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest performance report. Average firm pretax income declined by 9.6 percent, from $1.58 million in the second quarter to $1.43 million in the third, the MBA reported. The group’s quarterly report includes lenders of all types and sizes but has a significant number of smaller independent mortgage companies. Some 82.9 percent of lenders turned a profit ...

Mortgage production likely will be flat in 2015, a prognosis that usually doesn’t warm the hearts of vendors that make their living off of originators. But don’t tell that to Ellie Mae, the publicly traded mortgage software provider whose Encompass platform has been growing steadily in recent years. In an interview with Inside Mortgage Trends, company President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Corr predicted that Ellie Mae’s revenues will grow by 25 percent next year, the same growth rate as ...

Commercial banks and thrifts reported slightly higher valuations on their mortgage servicing rights during the third quarter of 2014, but they continued to shed MSR, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. Banks serviced a total of $4.412 trillion of home mortgages for other investors, typically loans that have been pooled in mortgage-backed securities. That was down 1.0 percent from the second quarter and off 7.5 percent from the third quarter of 2013 ...

Private mortgage insurers ended the third quarter of 2014 on a strong note, increasing their combined volume of net premiums written to $1.05 billion, up 9.8 percent from the prior quarter and 2.8 percent over the first nine months compared to the same period a year ago, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of industry data. Based on the upward production trend over the last three quarters, it appears the private MIs are on their way to a strong close at year end ...

Downpayment requirements play a larger role than interest rates in whether a potential borrower can afford a mortgage, according to new research from staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Potential borrowers who are less wealthy are particularly sensitive to downpayment requirements. Andreas Fuster and Basit Zafar, senior economists at the NY Fed, designed a survey in which respondents are asked for their maximum willingness to pay for a home comparable to their current home ...

Originations of jumbo mortgages increased in the third quarter of 2014 compared with the previous quarter, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance, an affiliated publication. Big banks continue to have a strong appetite for jumbos, prompting some smaller banks to sell jumbos to them and keeping some nonbanks out of the jumbo mortgage-backed security market altogether. An estimated $65.0 billion in jumbos were originated in the third quarter of 2014 ... [Includes one data chart]

Goldman Sachs teamed with EverBank Financial to issue a unique jumbo mortgage-backed security last week, its first jumbo MBS since the financial crisis. The $282.80 million GS Mortgage-Backed Securities Trust 2014-EB1 received AAA ratings with credit enhancement of 8.35 percent on the senior tranche. All of the loans in the deal are hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages originated by EverBank. Some 7.9 percent of the ARMs have a 10-year interest-only period. The deal marked a shift ...

The FHA’s accounting of receivables from settled legal claims and partial claim notes is so sloppy that the exact amount collected might be difficult to gauge, according to an internal audit of the agency’s FY 2014 and 2013 financial statements. Conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Inspector General, the audit concluded that the FHA had booked receivables from seven cash settlements totaling $1.2 billion in FY 2014 but collected only $466.4 million of those settlements. In addition, during fiscal 2014, as part of its loss mitigation efforts to bring delinquent loans current, the FHA paid $4.4 billion to lenders for partial claims but never received the required promissory notes from the lenders for $1.5 billion of the claim payments. FHA rules require lenders to provide the agency with promissory notes for the payments made or ...