Finance

Bankers say they understand the need for an extraordinary government response to the coronavirus outbreak, but worry that even slashing interest rates won’t stimulate demand.

The Federal Housing Administration is making coronavirus adjustments while warning of possible delays as the industry anticipates a new wave of borrowing due to the Federal Reserve's latest short-term rate cut.

Maxex, a company that acts as a private exchange for residential mortgage sales, is seeing a pickup in business as sellers seek additional outlets for their nonagency loans.

Impac Mortgage Holdings decided a year ago to emphasize its non-qualified mortgage lending operations and placed the company in position to succeed when the housing market returns to normal.

Home price gains continued during the fourth quarter and pushed the share of upside-down mortgages to the lowest level since the housing crisis, according to CoreLogic.

Not so long after Treasury bond yields experienced an unprecedented drop, the average 30-year mortgage rate rose, reflecting volatility related to the coronavirus as well as capacity issues on multiple levels.

Companies in the mortgage business were already focused on processing a lot of loans and generating efficiencies before the latest uptick in business hit.

With the return of volume and profitability to mortgage lending, it is no surprise that commercial banks are coming back to the market.

Terry Wakefield, a technology consultant who helped launch Fannie Mae's mortgage-backed securities business and form Prudential Home Mortgage, has died. He was 70.

Mortgage companies that borrow heavily to keep their operations running may face financial pressure from coronavirus-related market volatility as it affects the valuations of collateral securing their financing.

The $400 million Toorak Mortgage Trust 2020-1 is the largest securitization to date for Toorak, which provides short-term institutional capital for individual and corporate real estate developers.

Mortgage lenders could benefit from the surge in refinancing due to widening market spreads, and that could help offset damage to servicing rights portfolio valuations, according to Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

It's hard to overstate just how wild bond markets have gotten amid the coronavirus scare, forcing traders to rethink what's possible.

Altisource Portfolio Solutions lost nearly the same amount of money as it did for the whole year while it continued the business transition started in 2018.

Nonbank mortgage employment fell in January, but could subsequently surge as lenders seek to capture business while rates are low, the job outlook is favorable, and the coronavirus is contained.

FirstKey Mortgage is sponsoring a rare pooling of manufactured housing loans in a $507.1 million securitization.

Mortgage-related companies finalized four partnerships, a servicing-retention firm went up for sale, and a long-delayed insurance-related transaction moved forward this week in a wave of industry merger and acquisition activity.

Fannie Mae completed its first two Credit Insurance Risk Transfer transactions of 2020, shifting $1 billion of single-family loan credit risk to insurers and reinsurers.

Any impact from the coronavirus outbreak on commercial and multifamily loan delinquencies won't be known for some time, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

The Federal Reserve has voted unanimously to cut the interest rate 50 basis points to 1.10% effective March 4, in the first emergency rate cut since 2008.