Many of the top players in the mortgage industry reported declines in net mortgage-banking income during the fourth quarter, but they also showed resilience in the face of declining production and persistent buyback risk. A diverse group of 17 financial institutions reported a combined $1.42 billion in mortgage-banking profits during the fourth quarter of 2013, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports. That was down 2.0 percent from the previous quarter ... [Includes one data chart]

If mortgage bankers want to make money they have to sell loans, and loan sales fell off sharply in the third quarter of 2013, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank and thrift call-report data. Banks sold $296.4 billion of home mortgages during the third quarter, a 23.0 percent drop from the previous period. It was the lowest sales volume since the third quarter of 2011 and coincided with an even sharper 41.7 percent decline in mortgage banking income reported by the ... [Includes one data chart]

Understanding best practices is useful for commercial mortgage servicers and other industry participants in fulfilling business responsibilities. However, understanding how best practices develop – and can be improved – is not only valuable but also serves the whole industry, according to a new report from Standard & Poor’s. There are many examples of best practices that could further improve performance and revise market expectations – for example, the investor reporting package, loan modification ...

Issuance of jumbo mortgage-backed securities has ground to a halt recently but that hasn’t stopped lenders that were participating in the jumbo MBS market from originating loans. Instead, some have shifted their output of jumbos to whole-loan sales. PrimeLending, W.J. Bradley Mortgage and other jumbo lenders whose loans helped fuel the surge in jumbo MBS issuance in the first half of 2013 have shifted to selling whole loans directly to investors, often banks. Scott Eggen, director of capital markets at PrimeLending ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development sold 62,062 distressed loans in 2013 through its expanded Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP) to increase recoveries to FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. HUD made 10 offerings of nonperforming FHA-insured loans in a series of quarterly competitive auctions last year, participated in by pre-qualified bidders, including nonprofit organizations. The defaulted single-family mortgages were provided by FHA-approved loan servicers and sold through large national pools and “neighborhood stabilization outcome” pools. The NSO pools consist of loans in ...

The FHA's recently updated manual underwriting standards provide some objective criteria for qualifying more borrowers but, at the same time, some of those standards could bar certain people from obtaining an FHA mortgage, according to compliance experts. A key change in the guidelines is the lowering of the credit score threshold from 620 to 580 to allow manually underwritten borrowers – those that have received a “refer” recommendation from FHA’s Total Mortgage Scorecard or those that were not scored because they did not have credit scores – to use compensating factors in order to ...

Program eligibility is one of the top five reasons a loan can get an “unacceptable” rating in a post-endorsement technical review of a targeted sample of FHA loans. In a sample review conducted by FHA between July 1, 2013, and Sept. 30, 2013, 10 percent of the 6,692 targeted loans were defective due to program eligibility. Of that 10 percent, 76 percent were rated unacceptable by FHA. The results reflect the initial rating of each file reviewed during the quarter, which include conforming, deficient and unacceptable. An unacceptable rating may change if the lender submits mitigating documentation to FHA. But even if subsequently mitigated, the fact ...

Lenders whose fiscal years ended on Oct. 31 or Nov. 30, 2013, must complete their annual recertification by their respective deadlines, Jan. 31 and Feb. 28, 2014, or face dire consequences, the FHA warned. These lenders must complete their recertification through the current system, the Lender Assessment Sub-System (LASS), which will soon be retired and replaced with the Lender Electronic Assessment Portal (LEAP). The LASS enables lenders to submit their information, including net worth, liquidity and audited financial data, electronically. LEAP will go live in April and ...

FHA endorsements fell 25.1 percent in the third quarter of 2013 from the previous quarter as interest rates roller-coastered and refinancing lost steam, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of FHA data. After delayed reporting for two months, the FHA also released data showing a 27.9 percent decline in new endorsements in November from October, with lenders reporting $8.7 billion in total originations for the month. Purchase mortgages accounted for 77.1 percent of November’s FHA volume. Fixed-rate mortgages comprised 97.2 percent of total originations for the month. On a quarter-to-quarter basis, production fell to ... [2 charts]