FHA Commissioner Carol Galante has rejected mortgage industry calls to lower mortgage insurance premiums, saying that while the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund is on the mend it still has not fully recovered from the impact of massive legacy losses. Speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association National Advocacy Conference in Washington, DC, this week, Galante said the Department of Housing and Urban Development is currently focused on strengthening the fund and expanding access to credit for all qualified borrowers. She reminded lenders that mortgage premium increases – five hikes from 2008 to 2013 – were necessary to protect the MMIF and properly price for the risk the FHA is assuming. “The MMI Fund is...
At the end of February, Ocwen Financial issued a $123.6 million security backed by mortgage-servicing rights on agency mortgages, the first of its kind. The security was attractive to investors as well as to nonbanks, with more transactions expected, according to the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Council. The transaction has a 14-year debt obligation and was secured by Ocwen-owned MSRs on mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of approximately $11.8 billion. Investors in Ocwen Asset Servicing Income Series 2014-1 receive a monthly payment of 21 basis points of the unpaid principal balance of the reference pool in the form of an interest-only strip, along with certain other payments. In a new analysis, the HFPC’s Laurie Goodman and Pamela Lee said...
Negative spreads between a fixed-rate HECM loan and advancing future funds at a fixed rate could endanger servicers’ capacity to meet their obligations under the HECM MBS program,
“Not only will FHA continue to go after the big banks, but they’re going after the mid-sized banks as well,” said Andrew Henscel, whose firm defends originators.
One ad on the radio sounds like The 60 Plus Association is doing the Lord’s work for the pension funds of fire fighters and policemen. After all, public pensions owned GSE stock prior to the crash and lost a bundle.
New single-family business volume at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to decline in early 2014, hitting the lowest quarterly total in 14 years during the first three months of the year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking. The two government-sponsored enterprises issued a total of $129.2 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2014. That was down 29.1 percent from the already weak production of the fourth quarter and off 63.7 percent from the same period in 2013. The first-quarter 2014 total marked...[Includes two data charts]
Also, new single-family MBS production by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plummeted 15.6 percent from February to March as the GSEs posted their lowest quarterly production total in 14 years.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s annual “performance goal” scorecard for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been issued to the two government-sponsored enterprises for comment and likely will be released by month’s end, according to industry officials briefed on the matter. But as for its contents going forward, that’s a different matter entirely. The 2013 version set forth...
New residential MBS issuance in the first three months of 2014 sank to the lowest quarterly volume since late in 2000, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. A total of $191.7 billion of residential MBS were issued in the first quarter of this year, down 25.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013. Compared to first quarter of 2013, new MBS issuance was down 59.2 percent. MBS production has been falling...[Includes two data charts]
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