American Homes 4 Rent, the largest publicly traded player in the single-family rental market, late this week agreed to buy American Residential Properties in a deal valued at $1.5 billion. It was the second transaction involving real estate investment trusts in the SFR sector within three months, and has sparked talk of further consolidation, including perhaps mortgage REITs. A research note from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, penned right before the AH4R-ARP combination was unveiled, noted that mergers in the space are possible “given current valuation discounts ….” In other words, the share prices of single-family rental REITs have been...
In addition to state law, federal laws address cross-selling issues. The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, for example, covers referrals of settlement service business, like residential mortgage loans.
“Some of you work the regular hours with minimal extra ... and this will not work,” an assistant vice president and underwriting manager at Franklin American said in an email to underwriters...
Warehouse banks ended the third quarter with $46.0 billion of commitments on their books, a 4.2 percent sequential decline as residential originations in the primary market slowed and nonbank customers needed less credit. According to survey figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, warehouse commitments at the end of September were up 27.8 percent from the same point in 2014. The quarterly decline was...
Fannie Mae last week updated its policies to allow seller/servicers to pledge a transfer of interest in their servicing income as collateral. Now Fannie, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae have three different approaches for the pledge of servicing income and/or servicing advances. David Fleig, president and CEO of MorVest Capital, an investment firm, noted that the update by Fannie follows a move by Ginnie. Last year, Ginnie started allowing issuers to pledge servicing income without notifying Ginnie. Fannie’s new policy requires...