Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a modified bill that would require federal banking regulators to study the role of depository institutions in the MSR market.
CFPB chief Richard Cordray promised: "If we see errors, we’ll point out what they are and how they should be corrected. We will not be looking to be punitive toward people.”
Despite shrinking housing receivables, Citigroup marked up the asset value of its MSR contracts to $1.924 billion, a 14 percent improvement from the end of the first quarter.
Depository institutions – along with the top tier of companies that service loans pooled in mortgage-backed securities by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae – continued to pull back from the market during the second quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. Commercial banks, thrifts and credit unions serviced a total of $3.218 trillion of mortgage servicing rights connected with agency MBS as of the end of the second quarter. That was down 6.9 percent from the first quarter of 2015. Although depositories remain the dominant force in the agency MSR market, accounting for 64.2 percent of servicing on outstanding single-family MBS, nonbanks continued...[Includes four data tables]
While the Federal Housing Finance Agency takes its time deciding whether nonbanks should be allowed to use captive insurance units to become members of a Federal Home Loan Bank, real estate investment trusts appear to be ramping up their borrowings from the system’s advance window. At least that’s what Inside Mortgage Finance found when it recently conducted a spot check of mortgage REITs that have gained access to the FHLBank system via a captive insurance subsidiary. Redwood Trust, for example, had...