Finance

The government controlled Ally Financial Thursday morning filed an amended S-1 statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying it hopes to sell $100 million worth of common stock to the general public.

CoreLogic, once the largest shareholder of Ellie Mae’s stock, sold its stake in the loan origination system vendor.

The Prestwick Mortgage Group is offering $128 million of Freddie Mac servicing rights and hopes to complete the auction by the end of next week.

As mortgage rates continue to be at all-time lows, the present day is a better time than ever before for a prospective homebuyer to purchase any type of property.

Roughly 33 full-timers will lose their jobs when Ally Financial closes its MBS broker/dealer operation, according to a company spokeswoman.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has conceded that the higher incentive payments the Treasury Department is willing to pay make principal reduction cost effective for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Over the last 10 years, $23.7-billion State Employees' Credit Union in Raleigh, N.C. has not had a single mortgage handed back to it by an investor due to poor underwriting.

Even though third-party due diligence has always been performed on whole loans, the providers of these services have more skin-in-the-game now that rating agencies have very stringent requirements.

Non-agency MBS investors should look for bonds with smaller loan sizes in a structure that is levered to severity, said Amherst Securities Group analysts in a recent report.

If the new RMBS deals issued in the past week give an indication of what the non-agency market space will look like, then it is clear that only the best will do.

The potential sale of the Maiden Lane III (ML III) assets might signal that the Federal Reserve is making its move to take liquidity out of the system, securitization experts said Thursday.

There have not been very many weeks yet this year where the markets have not been roiled about something, and the last week was not one of them either.

Wells Fargo, the successor to Wachovia Capital Markets, told a federal court in Wichita, Kan. Friday it should dismiss NCUA's suit over mortgage-backed securities Wachovia sold to offering prospectuses.

Thirty Democratic senators are urging the Federal Housing Finance Agency to evaluate the use of principal reduction as a "targeted solution" for assisting underwater borrowers with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans.

The total return to investors from U.S.-based REITs in the first quarter was 10.41%, underperforming the S&P 500, which had a 12.59% return for the period, according to the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. Still, REITs were successful in raising money during the period, possibly setting the stage to jump into the commercial refinance market.

By at least two measures CMBS delinquencies took a notable upward turn in the last month, and by one measure new defaults also are still on the rise. But some observers believe the deterioration in performance is slowing in some areas and better days may lie ahead.

Small mortgage banking companies benefited from a 32% jump in loan production from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, but profitability per loan was crimped by a slight drop in pricing in the secondary mortgage market, according to a new report by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's three-year effort to develop standardized loan data reporting requirements for newly originated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages will finally go live this month.

One of the major contributors to the housing bubble and subsequent collapse of the market was overinflated prices. Now, believes one CEO, the opposite scenario exists.

The Federal Housing Administration is taking an extra step to make sure certain homeowners aren't locked out of a special refinancing program that President Obama unveiled on March 6.