Despite a slowdown during its final lap, 2017 was a strong year for sales of agency mortgage servicing rights, according to a new analysis of mortgage-backed securities data by Inside Mortgage Trends.The market saw some $538.49 billion of agency servicing rights change hands last year, a 22.0 percent increase from 2016. Most of the MSR transfers were bulk transactions, which totaled $406.78 billion, a huge 51.1 percent jump from the previous year. Bulk deals ... [Includes three data charts]
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw a 27.2 percent surge in refinance business during the fourth quarter that helped offset an 8.3 percent drop in purchase-mortgage acquisitions, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of mortgage-backed securities data. The wholesale-broker channel recorded a 7.4 percent increase in production during the fourth quarter, compared to smaller increases in retail (2.6 percent) and correspondent (6.0 percent) ... [Includes one data chart]
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been charged with exploring options to update their current FICO credit scoring model and make a decision this year as to whether to make the switch in 2019.
The game-changing ability-to-repay mortgage lending rule from the Consumer Financial Protec-tion Bureau took effect four years ago this month. At that time, regulators said there would be plenty of mortgage lending outside the parameters of the qualified-mortgage box. So far, however, that ex-pectation has yet to be realized.
According to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, BofA ranked sixth among first lien lenders in the third quarter, but U.S. Bank isn’t too far behind in the number seven spot.