Ginnie Mae gave seller/servicers a heads-up on the longer approval times in late November at an “education summit” in Washington attended by both new and existing issuers.
Citigroup marked up the asset value of its MSRs by 5 percent, on a sequential basis, to $2.718 billion. Compared to 4Q12, its MSRs are now worth 40 percent more - even though its overall portfolio has been shrinking in size.
It’s likely that little in the way of money is changing hands on the deal. By selling the MSRs to Fannie, Citi is also settling the payment of “compensatory” fee claims the GSE is owed by the bank.
According to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, Flagstar is the nation’s second largest wholesale/broker lender. It also has a fairly large presence in the warehouse market.
According to the bank’s fourth quarter earnings statement, 68 percent of its originations were refis – the mirror image of Wells Fargo, which had 68 percent of its production in purchase-money loans.
It may be time for the mortgage industry to take a chill-pill: applications are on the rise again, rates have stabilized and some firms are actually hiring loan officers.
On a sequential basis, the origination results look slightly better: a 38 percent decline compared to the third quarter of 2013 for Wells and a 42 percent downdraft for JPM. Both have laid off thousands of mortgage workers over the few quarters.