Finance

FHA officials believe lenders will qualify more borrowers with sub-680 credit scores via manual underwriting, but there is concern they will simply limit originations to plain-vanilla FHA.

The slide in refinancing brings commitments to purchase new mortgages to its lowest level since June 2011.

The portfolio also has an average loan size of $265,833 and is 100% first lien.

These institutions see an opportunity in a declining market to fill a void created by competitors exiting.

The settlement is part of CEO Brian Moynihan’s efforts to resolve liabilities tied to faulty mortgages that have cost the company at least $50 billion since the financial crisis.

The title underwriter will contribute its restaurant and auto parts investments into a new subsidiary.

The pool has a relatively high concentration of 11 hotel properties securing close to 21% of the allocated loan balance.

The real estate investment trust recorded a consecutive-quarter earnings gain on Thursday that reflects slower prepayments in its agency adjustable-rate mortgage portfolio during the last three months of 2013.

Chances that Congress will move this year to wind down or transform the GSEs are dimming as lawmakers confront a split among Senate Democrats and a change at the regulator of the mortgage finance companies.

The company said it bought Morgan’s European real estate loan servicing business, boosting the amount the U.K. debt manager oversees to about $13 billion.

PHH Corp. was the largest percentage gainer among Mortgage Industry Equity Composite stocks one day after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleged it participated in a mortgage insurance kickback scheme.

BlackRock Solutions as an advisor is offering more than $2 billion in bonds from 234 nonagency RMBS that the agency acquired when bailing out ING Groep.

Most mortgage-backed securities from the boom years are affected by a ruling that broadly places a statute of limitations on loan representations and warranties.

Most of the 4% year-over-year increase came in the first part of 2013.

The news of the $10 billion cut in purchases led 14 of the 17 Mortgage Industry Equity Composite stocks to close lower.

President Obama hit on several important issues for bankers in his annual address to Congress Tuesday night, including mortgage finance reform, though as expected financial services issues largely took a backseat to other national concerns, like unemployment and the minimum wage.

The homebuilder has the largest percentage increase among Mortgage Industry Equity Composite stocks one day after it received an analyst downgrade.

The mortgage insurer is one of only two Mortgage Industry Equity Composite stocks to close higher on Monday.

The provision includes about $3.5 billion for lawsuits and fines tied mostly to the sale of $91 billion of mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007.

Interactive Mortgage Advisors is exclusively brokering the mortgage servicing rights, which have a wide geographic dispersion outside of a less than 19% Texas concentration and less than 10% California concentration.