Retail mortgage lending continued to lose market share in the second half of 2018, mostly due to a surge in correspondent production. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of mortgage-backed securities data shows that the retail share of loans sold to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae fell to 48.6 percent last year. During the fourth quarter, sales of retail-originated loans declined by 14.9 percent, the sharpest downturn among ... [Includes two data charts]
Private mortgage insurers continued to expand their presence in the flow of purchase-money mortgages into mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. In 2018, lenders sold $243.54 billion of purchase loans with private MI coverage to Fannie and Freddie, a sturdy 13.8 percent rise from 2017, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis. Private mortgage insurance accounted for 46.8 percent of agency ... [Includes two data charts]
Mortgage banking firms employed 245,800 full-timers as of the end of November, the worst reading in 10 months, according to figures compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mortgage brokerage firms — listed separately in the BLS tracking system — employed 89,100 workers, a loss of 900 positions from October. A year ago, the broker segment had 92,000 full-timers. The seasonally adjusted figures, which trail the national employment numbers by a month, portend uneasiness ahead for ...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late this week issued two separate reports assessing the effectiveness of its Ability-to-Repay/Qualified Mortgage rule and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act servicing rule. One critical question of the ATR/QM assessment is the fate of the so-called “GSE patch,” which exempts loans eligible for purchase by the two government-sponsored enterprises from the debt-to-income ratio limit of 43 percent. The exemption is set to expire by ...