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Inside Mortgage Finance

October 12, 2017

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Agency MBS Data Show Private MI Business Kept Growing in 3Q17, FHA Activity Lagged Behind

Private mortgage insurers captured a larger share of the purchase-mortgage market during the third quarter of 2017 as the credit profile of new FHA production tilted toward riskier business, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized $64.59 billion of purchase loans with private MI coverage during the third quarter, a 28.5 percent jump from the previous period. That was substantially greater than the ... [Includes three data charts] Read More

As PHH Exits Private-Label Sector, Big Jumbo Client Up for Grabs, Investors Take Stock Buyback Offer

Over the past week or so, at least two institutional investors have filed notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission that they no longer own large positions in PHH Corp., the publicly traded nonbank that’s trying to reinvent itself as a subservicing specialist. The two filers are investment banking powerhouse Morgan Stanley – which at one time owned 5.2 percent of PHH – and Hotchkis and Wiley Capital Management, whose stake totaled 8.8 percent. Today, Morgan’s position ... Read More

Industry Groups Generally Support CFPB’s Fix To TRID ‘Black Hole,’ Suggest Various Tweaks

Organizations representing different segments of the mortgage industry broadly support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s plan to address the so-called black hole in the integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, or TRID. The black hole refers to situations in which a lender may not use a closing disclosure to reset fee tolerances. This causes closing delays due to fee changes that arise in the origination process ... Read More

Stearns Lending Reveals it Has a Mortgage Joint Venture with SoFi

Social Finance, the high-flying marketplace lender, has an active mortgage-lending joint venture with Stearns Lending, according to David Schneider, CEO of Stearns. In a recent interview with Inside Mortgage Finance, Schneider said his company “covers a lot of [SoFi’s] business” and buys any loan the joint venture produces. “They do some, and we do some,” Schneider said. He added that Stearns doesn’t service any loans for SoFi. At the recent ABS East conference in Miami, Ashish Jain ... Read More

FHFA Wants Fannie, Freddie and FHLBanks To Beef Up Their Cybersecurity Programs

The Federal Housing Finance Agency wants the government-sponsored enterprises and the Federal Home Loan Banks to hire chief information security officers to head their cybersecurity programs. The new directive was released just after the FHFA Office of Inspector General issued an audit faulting the regulator’s oversight of cybersecurity issues, and in the wake of further revelations about data breaches at Equifax and other large enterprises. The FHFA said Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the ... Read More

GSEs Continue Adapting Seller Requirements To Conform With Pending HMDA Changes

Efforts by Congressional Republicans to expand exemptions to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data collection and reporting requirements may or may not succeed. But any lender or aggregator seeking to sell eligible mortgages to the government-sponsored enterprises will still have to get with the program. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to tweak their systems and processes to accommodate the new mandates, scheduled to kick in Jan. 1 ... Read More

Political Storm May Be Brewing Over Trump Administration Bid to Cancel Some NFIP Debt

The Trump administration has proposed to cancel $16 billion of the National Flood Insurance Program’s existing debt in addition to other legislative proposals to boost the program’s ability to meet its obligations while remaining viable as a major provider of flood insurance to mortgagors. A political fight could erupt over the proposals, observers say. In a letter to Vice President Michael Pence, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney sought legislative reforms that would place the ... Read More

Widespread Defaults Predicted for Vintage HELOCs Didn’t Happen; Performance Helped by Price Gains

Federal regulators and industry analysts raised concerns that defaults would spike once pre-crisis home-equity lines of credit hit their amortization periods. Those fears didn’t come to pass as vintage HELOCs have performed well, thanks to home-price appreciation and low interest rates. Pre-crisis HELOCs typically had interest-only periods for the first 10 years then switch to fully amortizing or required a full payment as part of a balloon feature. According to a 2015 report by the Office of the Currency ... Read More

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