The housing finance reform legislation authored by Sens. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Mike Crapo, R-ID, will result in higher guaranty fees and less cross-subsidization than the current Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fee structure, according to the government-sponsored enterprises. The Johnson-Crapo bill, which was abruptly pulled from a scheduled markup before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week, would establish a new type of MBS with an explicit government backstop that requires private capital to absorb the first 10 percent of losses. “There is...
There’s a growing concern among participants in the secondary market that legislation in the Senate to reform the government-sponsored enterprises won’t be able to allow the to-be-announced market to function. The latest anxieties were raised by officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose securities flourish in the TBA market. Legislation in the Senate from Sens. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Mike Crapo, R-ID, calls for the preservation of the TBA market but doesn’t provide any roadmap for how the proposed Federal Mortgage Insurance Corp. should accomplish that feat. “Unless the FMIC sets...
Additional industry layoffs are likely in the months ahead. In the first quarter, all lenders originated just $235 billion in mortgages. It was the weakest production quarter in 14 years.
The first-quarter high-LTV refi market was down 37.1 percent from the fourth quarter and off a hefty 79 percent from the $51.4 billion of business the two GSEs did back in the first three months of last year.
Although the Johnson-Crapo housing finance reform bill has little chance of becoming law this year, comments on the legislation submitted to the Treasury Department by the Federal Housing Finance Agency strongly suggest that the current regulator of the government-sponsored enterprises wants its reincarnation to have expanded oversight powers. Industry officials, lobbyists and executives tracking the bill note that if the FHFA has its way, the new Federal Mortgage Insurance Corp. will become a supervisor of nonbanks that originate loans slated for securitization. Currently, the FHFA serves...
Major contributors to the jumbo MBS include New Penn Financial with a 25.5 percent share, Prospect Mortgage and Prospect Lending with a combined 20.4 percent share and Quicken Loans with a 15.5 percent share.
Ocwen's share price fell 7 percent on the day, moving closer to its 52-week low of $33.54. Its high is a mouth-watering $60.18. In other words, its market cap has been almost halved.
During the first quarter of 2014, nonbank lenders accounted for 37.7 percent of originations, based on a market sample covering over three quarters of fundings during the period.
RSS