The four major banks reclassified $6.0 billion in home-equity loans to nonperforming status this month due to guidance from federal regulators. While the holdings have been seen as an impediment to loss mitigation efforts, the banks said the accounting change was essentially cosmetic. Bank of America classified $4.36 billion in HELs as nonperforming as of the end of the first quarter of 2012, up from $2.45 billion at the end of 2011. The increase was due to ...

Invesco liquidated its fund in the Public-Private Investment Program this month, earning a strong 18.2 percent cumulative net internal rate of return on $2.3 billion in capital. “The PPIP program has resuscitated the private-label mortgage-backed securities market and, at least in our case, resulted in a handsome profit to the Treasury Department,” said Wilbur Ross, chairman of the Investment Committee of the fund and chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co. “We are proud to have participated in it.” Among the seven non-agency public-private investment funds that were participating in the PPIP ... [Includes one data chart]

A data and analytics firm has developed a method to hedge exposure to the underlying risk associated with fluctuating real estate values. The Chicago Board Options Exchange has approved the RPX Futures for its futures exchange. The RPX Composite Index, designed by Radar Logic, calculates the daily value of home prices by determining the price of housing per square foot. “The RPX is a translation of price per square foot gathered from public source records,” explained Michael Feder, CEO of Radar Logic. “We look at all closing transactions with enough information to observe.” The index numbers...

Mortgage bankers are reporting solid gains in profitability during the first quarter of 2012 without seeing any major increase in production volume compared to the end of last year. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports from eight of the largest bank-held mortgage operations shows a solid 22.5 percent increase in mortgage banking earnings compared to the fourth quarter. All eight companies reported net profits for early 2012, including two – JPMorgan Chase and PNC Financial – that posted losses in the previous quarter. The combined $6.50 billion in first-quarter mortgage banking earnings...

New mortgage servicing rules unveiled recently by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will likely result in higher mortgage servicing costs and reduced revenue for servicers although some analysts say the rules could have a positive effect on large banks. The CFPB recently previewed some of the servicing rules it plans to issue this summer and finalize by January 2013. Specifically, the rules would require monthly mortgage statements that include mortgage terms, detailed payment information, fee disclosures and loss-mitigation information for delinquent borrowers. They also call for...

Mortgage banking operations owned by commercial banks posted a significant increase in loan sales during the fourth quarter, helping to push earnings higher. Bank mortgage banking units sold a total of $299.0 billion of single-family mortgages during the fourth quarter, up 20.2 percent from the previous three-month period. It was the industry’s second quarterly increase in sales volume after sinking to just $227.0 billion during the second quarter of last year. For the full year, mortgage sales came in 14.4 percent below the level reported during 2010, and the banking...(Includes one data chart)

Lenders should expect at least a short-term boost in profits from the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recent tweaks to the Home Affordable Refinance Program, analysts say, but HARP 2.0’s long-run effectiveness to the pool of underwater borrowers remains an open question. Since January, the industry’s largest mortgage servicers, including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, have seen a significant uptick in new refinance applications for HARP 2.0. “This quarter should be one of the strongest quarters for mortgage banking we’ve seen in quite some time,” said FBR Capital Markets’ Paul...(Includes one data chart)

Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase reclassified more than $3 billion of second-lien mortgages as nonperforming loans in the first quarter of 2012, a move other banks have copied. Both Wells and JPMorgan said that federal guidance from late January was behind the change. Wells characterized $1.7 billion of subordinate home-equity loans as nonperforming and JPMorgan assigned $1.6 billion to that status. “We do not view this as a material shift in the performance of these loans or the reserving methodology,” Fitch Ratings wrote. “However, increased regulatory scrutiny of second liens may continue to...

Ally Financial Inc. is cutting back significantly on its wholesale mortgage business and moving away from its correspondent and broker channel so that it can focus more on originations through the retail and direct channels. In recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ally said the shift to the higher-margin retail and direct channels will not have a significant impact on profitability overall if both channels can assume the current volume of government-backed mortgages coming through the correspondent and broker wholesale conduits. “We will continue to evaluate this...

Bank and thrift holdings of home-equity loans continue to decline, particularly holdings of closed-end second liens. Even though performance on the loans currently remains strong, industry analysts warn that these assets could cause major losses. Banks and thrifts held $1.18 trillion in home-equity lines of credit, unused HELOC commitments and closed-end seconds at the end of 2011, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database. That was down 1.5 percent from the third quarter of 2011 and down 8.8 percent from the end of 2010 ... [Includes one data chart]