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Inside Mortgage Trends

November 20, 2015

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Banks Report Sharp Drop in Mortgage-Banking Income During Third Quarter

Commercial banks and savings institutions reported a hefty decline in mortgage-banking income from the second to the third quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. The banking industry earned $3.793 billion from mortgage banking during the third quarter, a 37.7 percent decline from the previous three-month period. That’s an even bigger drop than the 25.8 percent decline reported by the group of 34 ... [Includes one data chart] Read More

Are Mortgage Lenders Missing the Mobile Boat?

Recent findings from a Fannie Mae survey suggest a substantial digital divide exists between the mortgage lending industry and younger, more tech-savvy borrowers who want to shop for a mortgage online via mobile technology, such as smartphones and tablets. For instance, roughly three out of four lenders surveyed recently by the government-sponsored enterprise do not offer a mobile software application to help consumers shop for a mortgage. “Larger and mid-sized ... Read More

Altisource Asset Management Stock Still Falling

When you hold an earnings call and not one analyst shows up to ask a question, one of two things is going on: business is so good that no one needs to ask, or research firms have dropped your stock. The latter appears to be the case with Altisource Asset Management Corp., one of three publicly-traded companies that can trace its lineage to Ocwen Financial Corp., a once top-five ranked servicer that’s in the process of shrinking, deleveraging its balance sheet and trying to figure out ... Read More

Mortgage Customer Satisfaction Up in 2015

Mortgage customer satisfaction has improved this year compared to the previous year as lenders adopted new digital technology and improved efficiency, according to the J.D. Power 2015 U.S. Primary Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Survey. Overall customer satisfaction with the mortgage process averaged 793 in 2015, up 7 points from 2014. Customers expressed a high degree of satisfaction – a 22-point gain from the previous year – with the speed of the loan process ... Read More

Fed Watching Home Price/Rent Ratio for Bubble

Current readings from the house price-to-rent ratio point to the potential for a bubble in the housing market, according to John Williams, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. “I am starting to see signs of imbalances emerge in the form of high asset prices, especially in real estate, and that trips the alert system,” Williams said in a speech this month. He noted that the house price-to-rent ratio is close to where it was in 2003, and home prices continue to increase ... Read More

Courts Split on Liability for Servicing Contractors

Servicers’ use of property-management contractors has helped save costs and increase efficiencies but also opened servicers to liability, according to an analysis of litigation involving contractors. Christopher Odinet, an assistant professor of law at the Southern University Law Center, noted that servicers’ reliance on property-management firms increased in recent years due to long timelines for delinquencies and foreclosures. Servicers hire the firms to inspect ... Read More

Lessons in CFPB RESPA Enforcement Give Pause

With the CFPB’s legal action against PHH Corp. pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, a number of experts are revisiting the bureau’s enforcement actions related to marketing services agreements for clues as to how best to proceed going forward. What some of them are finding should give the industry pause. During a webinar this week, Jonathan Foxx, president and managing director at Lenders Compliance Group, a consulting firm ... Read More

Bank Repurchases Hit Post-Crisis Low

Repurchases and indemnifications by banks and thrifts fell to “just” $936.0 million in the third quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank call-report data. That was the lowest quarterly buyback figure for the industry since the first quarter of 2008, when banks began disclosing this activity in their call reports. The third-quarter repurchase total was down 17.9 percent from the previous three-month period. On a ... [Includes one data chart] Read More

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