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Inside Mortgage Trends

April 5, 2019

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Brokers Gain Share in Early 2019 Agency MBS Market

The wholesale-broker channel appears to be gaining ground in the tightly competitive primary market in agency conforming mortgages. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis reveals that broker originations accounted for 12.5% of single-family loans pooled in agency mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2019. That represented a substantial leap of 1.3 percentage points from the broker share of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae ... [Includes two data charts.] Read More

Most Mortgage Bankers Posted a Loss in 4Q18: MBA

The fourth quarter of 2018 was one of the hardest times in recent memory for companies to generate a profit from their mortgage banking operations. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that only 44.0% of participants in its quarterly performance survey managed to report positive pre-tax net income for the final three months of last year. This appears to be the lowest share of firms producing positive results in many years, lower than the 54.2% share back in the first quarter of 2014 ... Read More

FHA Takes Bigger Share of Agency Purchase Market

Ginnie Mae securitized $31.39 billion of FHA single-family purchase loans during the first quarter of 2019, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of agency mortgage-backed securities disclosures. Although that represented an 18.4% drop from the previous quarter, the FHA share of agency purchase loans edged up to 30.8% in early 2019 as other insurance programs saw larger declines. Private mortgage insurance remained ... [Includes one data chart.] Read More

Ocwen Settles Massachusetts Case; Ditech Slides Deeper

Ocwen Financial, the nation’s 12th largest servicer, has reached a civil settlement with the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General, to resolve a complaint filed by the state in 2017. As part of the agreement, Ocwen will make a $675,000 payment and provide relief to residential borrowers. The Massachusetts AG said the settlement involves total restitution of $2 million. The AG alleged that Ocwen committed “widespread mortgage servicing violations that increased Massachusetts ... Read More

Private MIs Excess Capital Seen at $2 Billion by Yearend

Private mortgage insurers could have excess capital of nearly $2 billion by the end of 2019, analysts predict. A recent report from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods suggests the combination of private mortgage insurers’ high returns on equity and increasing use of reinsurance through insurance-linked note deals is creating the largesse. All of the nation’s six active MIs are publicly traded or are owned by a parent company that is. From 2016 through 2018, private MI’s insurance-in-force grew at ... Read More

More States Look to Enhance Consumer Protection laws

More states are joining the chorus of calls to enforce consumer laws more rigorously, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shows signs of reducing its oversight responsibility. So far, at least four states have created state watchdog agencies akin to the CFPB. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office in July 2017 established a consumer financial protection unit, which focuses on mortgage issues, debt collection, payday lending and auto financing. Roughly 15 of its 25 attorneys ... Read More

DOL Proposes New Threshold for Overtime

The Department of Labor in March proposed a new threshold for overtime eligibility. The proposal leaves untouched standards that have been in place since 2010, which make mortgage loan officers eligible for overtime pay. Currently, certain employees that make at least $455 per week ($23,600 per year) are exempt from overtime pay, which is paid at 1.5 times the employee’s regular rate of pay when working more than 40 hours a week. The DOL proposed increasing the overtime ... Read More

China’s RMBS Sector Growing Fast, Says Moody’s

China’s residential mortgage-backed securities industry, which is younger and smaller than the U.S. RMBS market, has grown rapidly over the last few years, according to a new report from Moody’s Investor Service. Spurred by a growing mortgage market, China securitized an estimated $87 billion of residential loans in 2018. Though modest compared to the U.S. annual production, it was a record year for China, having tripled from the previous year’s total issuance and even surpassing ... Read More

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