The unexpected boom in refinance lending in 2009 helped propel the mortgage banking business to huge profits for the year, according to a new analysis of company earnings releases by Inside Mortgage Profitability. A diverse group of 19 lenders reported a total of $16.645 billion in mortgage banking earnings for all of last year, more than triple the amount they earned during all of 2008...
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Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, private mortgage insurers and the FHA will be aggressively enforcing buyback provisions in 2010 against mortgage lenders to limit credit losses, according to a new report from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. The trend picks up from the fourth quarter of 2009 where representations and warranties charges spiked as a result of a growing number of loans repurchased from the government-sponsored...
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Servicers are continuing to find that short sales can be among the most effective tactics to reduce loss severities within their portfolios, and the practice will likely become even more popular in April. That’s when the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program will kick into gear, including a short-sale incentive option for loans that can’t be effectively...
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Bond Street Bank last week became the first federally regulated bank to use a novel procedure to bid on and acquire failed or troubled institutions through the federal bidding process and bring private equity money into banking. The procedure involves the use of a “shelf charter,” which was developed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to enable investors that do not have a bank charter to...
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A patent issued to a mortgage industry veteran in 2009 could provide a profitable opportunity for various players in the industry as the trends of automated underwriting and streamlined loan processing gather steam and the market recovers. Richard Nacht, former owner of New Jersey-based Royal Mortgage Corp., said he started realizing that as AU systems were become prevalent, the trend was “a little silly...
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New Century Financial, one of the largest originators of subprime mortgages, didn’t waver from its business model from the subprime boom until its collapse in 2007, according to a Bank for International Settlements analysis. This commitment to what would cause the mortgage meltdown was a quintessential example of the mentality that perpetuated risky lending practices...
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Mortgage industry professionals are leaning more and more upon the latest technology applications to streamline their workflow, enhance collaboration, facilitate regulatory compliance, and otherwise take more advantage of “going paperless,” according to officials at Xerox Mortgage Services. The company recently surveyed 59 underwriters who use the company’s BlitzDocs Collaboration Suite of products...
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Loan-Score Decisioning Systems, an enterprise-class pricing and automated underwriting provider, and Global DMS, a provider of appraisal process management solutions, recently integrated their systems, thus enhancing the appraisal ordering process for Loan-Score’s broker users. The companies said the integration ensures that brokers using Loan-Score are precluded from...
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