The private mortgage insurance landscape is shifting in 2013 with the entry of a new MI provider, Genworth Financials announced plan to revamp its mortgage insurance business, and reports of a plan by Essent Guaranty to go public later this year. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last week approved National Mortgage Insurance Corp. as an eligible insurer, clearing the companys entry into the U.S. mortgage insurance market with a scheduled launch in the first quarter of 2013. NMICs entry brings to seven the number of companies that are currently active in the MI market while three other companies are in a runoff mode. Earlier last year, NMIC parent NMI Holdings, Inc., raised...
Fannie Mae is informing the mortgage cooperatives it works with that going forward that all the different affinity groups doing business with the government-sponsored enterprise will be treated the same when it comes to guaranty fees and charges for its Desktop Underwriter program, Inside Mortgage Finance has learned. One executive close to the situation told Inside Mortgage Finance that action by Fannie essentially equalizes all cooperatives in terms of the pricing breaks they receive from the GSE. Some affinity relationships have been in place...
Moodys Investors Service recently implemented a significant overhaul of its methods for assessing servicers of non-agency MBS, replacing criteria issued in 2001. Among other changes, the new standards expand the data sources Moodys will look at to include more timely figures from trustees and servicing performance for the government-sponsored enterprises. The analysis by Moodys includes monthly loan-level data from the servicer if provided on a timely basis, monthly performance data from the trustee when available, and GSE servicing data as needed. Previously, the rating service largely relied on loan-level portfolio data from servicers. The trust data is...
ReadyCap Commercial LLC, a startup based in Irvine, CA, issued its first loan approval a few days ago, and hopes to issue a commercial MBS by the fall. The companys forte is what it calls low balance commercial mortgages, including multifamily, office, industrial and retail properties. Its loan size menu ranges from $500,000 to $5 million, company CEO Steve Skolnik told Inside MBS & ABS. Skolnik, who until last June headed commercial services at Aurora Bank FSB, is...
During the next 12 to 24 months, investors should expect robust growth from the historically fragmented single-family real estate-owned-to-rental market as it emerges into an institutional asset class, according to analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. The KBW report noted that despite the markets traditionally limited funding source of capital retail or smaller institutional investors its horizons are expanding. Investor interest has increased...
Inside Mortgage Finance Publications, Inc. announced this week that it has just settled a major copyright infringement dispute with a large national financial institution for more than one quarter of a million dollars. Without admitting any infringement, liability or wrongdoing, the financial institution agreed to pay IMFP to settle charges that it had violated federal copyright laws by making unauthorized copies of Inside Mortgage Finance. IMFP alleged that the financial institution had engaged in ongoing in-fringement, distributing infringing copies of dozens of registered issues to a group of non-subscribing employees. We never like...
A temporary exemption for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages is among the plethora of provisions contained within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus long-awaited qualified mortgage rule issued last week. Even so, credit unions fear onerous GSE buyback requirements may be an unintended consequence of the new rule.Called for by the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPBs QM rule lists the characteristics of a qualified mortgage, or one that regulators will presume will be within a borrowers ability to repay the loan.
Last weeks $10 billion settlement between Fannie Mae and Bank of America over outstanding and potential repurchase claims is at least a truce in the bitter battle between the GSE and the bank that has simmered since the housing bubble burst. But the jury is still out as to how much business the two companies will do again going forward. Under the agreement, BofA will pay Fannie $3.55 billion cash and spend $6.75 billion to buy back some 30,000 loans sold by Countrywide Financial to the GSE. The comprehensive solution between the firms covers current and future repurchase obligations related to loans with an outstanding balance of $297 billion as of Nov. 30, 2012, that were originated and sold directly to Fannie from 2000 through 2008. The bank will also pay Fannie $1.3 billion in compensatory fee obligations for taking too long to address foreclosures.
A few weeks ago, ES Appraisal Services, Jacksonville, FL, closed its doors, the second national appraisal management company to go bust in the past year. The other was Appraisal Loft. ES Appraisals demise was a hardly a surprise. For months, industry message boards were full of comments from independent appraisers who worked as contractors for the firm, complaining about unpaid invoices. In December, the company sent an email to appraisers confirming the news. At one point the firm employed, on a contractual basis ...
Newcastle Investment announced last week that it will spin off all of its excess mortgage servicing rights and certain other residential assets as part of a new real estate investment trust. The company also participated in another significant servicing transaction with Nationstar Mortgage. The publicly traded REIT spin-off is set to be completed during the first quarter of 2013 and will be known as New Residential Investment. We believe the separation of Newcastle and New Residential will ...