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Inside Mortgage Trends

December 19, 2008

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Fed Intervention Jolts Refinance Market To Life, But 2009 Prospects Still Dim

The unprecedented boost given to the mortgage industry by the Federal Reserve has pushed mortgage rates to record lows and sparked a refinance boom that could be a rare bit of good news for a mortgage industry that’s been under severe strain. According to Inside Mortgage Finance, an affiliated newsletter, major lenders are now offering 30-year fixed rate mortgages... [Includes one chart] Read More

Technology Providers Need to Meet New Demands

Hit hard by declining profitability and market contraction, mortgage lenders are slashing their expenditures on information technology and forcing vendors to change gears quickly to meet shifting demand.Virginia Garcia, a senior research director at TowerGroup, said the decline in spending could potentially “cripple permanently” the IT sector. While many financial institutions had been... Read More

Option ARM Servicers Prepare for Gloomy Outlook

All the superpowers in the option ARM market have fallen, leaving their acquirers to deal with cleaning up the mess from a mortgage product severely strained by the long downturn in house values. Five of the six largest option ARM originators in 2007, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, Countrywide, American Home Mortgage and IndyMac, have all failed or been bought by larger institutions... Read More

Ocwen Boasts Loan Mod Success in Transition

Florida-based subprime servicer Ocwen Financial is touting much greater success with loan modifications than what theOffice of the Comptroller of the Currency found to be the industry-wide norm. Ocwen said its “loan-by-loan approach and proprietary, scalable technology and analytics” allow the firm to hold 60-day delinquencies on modified loans to just 24.6 percent after six... Read More

ResCap’s Prospects Brighten Under TARP

The future of Residential Capital, the long-beleaguered mortgage division of GMAC Financial Services, unexpectedly looked a bit rosier late this week after the Bush administration unveiled a short-term rescue package for major automakers. Under the rescue package President Bush announced Friday morning, General Motors and Chrysler will be able to tap $13.4 billion immediately under the... Read More

Disclosures Costly but Urgently Needed, Says FASB

Mortgage entities that are subject to new disclosure requirements issued last week by the Financial Accounting Standards Board may incur significant compliance costs but financial statements users say enhanced disclosures are urgently needed. The board said that a FASB Staff Position requiring disclosures of transferred financial assets and a company’s continuing... Read More

Technology Roundup:

As more attention is being directed toward sound underwriting practices, OpenClose Solutions... Cutting down on mortgage fraud is paramount in the struggle to remain afloat through... Managing the loan process from start-to-finish is successful when all parties involved in... Riviere Servicing says it is teaming up with CSC to “uphold and carry out the... Read More

Wells Fargo Tops in Mortgage Banking Income

Recent bank call report data analyzed by Inside Mortgage Profitability show that Wells Fargo Bank edged out Bank of America as the top producer of mortgage banking income through the first nine months of 2008. Wells reported $1.433 billion of mortgage banking income on its call reports for the first three quarters of the year, including.... [Includes one chart and one graph] Read More

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As homeowner equity continues to build, more and more lenders are launching home equity lending products. Are you thinking of joining this market?

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