Finance

Fannie Mae's issuance of mortgage-backed securities jumped 20% in December after a similar increase in November, according to new figures released by the mortgage giant.

NCUA said Tuesday it disagrees with a tentative ruling by a federal judge that would dismiss its suit against RBS Securities in the failure of WesCorp FCU, a ruling that could jeopardize similar suits against JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo for the sale of risky mortgage backed securities to five failed corporate credit unions.

Mortgage application volume fell by 2.9% for the week ended Jan. 27 from the previous week, even though mortgage interest rates declined for fixed-rate mortgages, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

President Obama's State of the Union and a recent regulatory speech as prepared for a securitization group's conference drive home the fact that generally the government's view of whether it wants to encourage the industry to lend more or not remains conflicted.

The Williams Capital Group LP has added a new structured finance unit to serve corporate, federal, state and local government clients and hired an executive who had held several key leadership positions within Lehman Brothers' mortgage and securitization businesses to head it.

Banc of Manhattan Capital, Woodland Hills, Calif., entered the correspondent mortgage channel late last year, buying $50 million worth of product in the month of December.

As Rep. Scott Garrett seeks to pass the first significant financial reform law since the Dodd-Frank Act, a lot of forces are aligned against him.

Evidence of insufficient or misleading disclosures during RMBS sales will be a focus of the new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group under President Obama's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, according Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's division of enforcement.

One of the co-chairs of the new federal/state Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group is preparing to file cases in the next few weeks against Wall Street firms involved in the packaging and selling of MBS.

JPMorgan Chase late last week told a federal court in Wichita that NCUA's negligence suit against top executives of WesCorp Federal Credit Union proves it was the shortcomings of those executives - and not any misrepresentations by the Wall Street bank's sales force in the sale of MBS - that caused the failure of WesCorp and three other corporate credit unions.

Certain categories of specially serviced U.S. CMBS loans are likely to keep increasing through 2012, according to a recent Fitch Ratings report.

The new collaboration between the federal government and certain states to investigate pre-crisis mortgage fraud will have 55 dedicated attorneys, investigators, analysts and support staff, officials said Friday.

Bank of America is ready to unload yet another multi-billion package of mortgage servicing rights, according to bidders and industry advisors familiar with the bank's plans.

I watched the State of the Union speech Tuesday and came away thinking no real "mortgage" surprises tonight except for two: Obama not using the word "mortgage broker" once, and the formation of the DOJ fraud task force on securitizing loans. But what about the "The State of the Mortgage Union"?

There was "very solid demand" for Freddie Mac's $6.5 billion five-year Reference Notes security Friday, according to a Freddie Mac spokesman, who told this publication it was distributed in line with what the GSE has seen on other recent Reference Note deals.

Investors considering nonperforming loan purchases are increasingly concerned about title chains and finding related concerns that need to be cleaned up, according to a new manager at one vendor in this business.

Raising guarantee fees on government-backed loans again would make a "bad situation worse," according to three industry groups that are lobbying elected officials to find new ways of funding a 10-month extension of the payroll tax holiday.

Compliance and documentation go together like education and success. And, the latter is even more determined today by finding the missing pieces in the transaction chain.

Dynex Capital Inc., a real estate investment trust that buys agency and non-agency, residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities, has priced its 12.5 million share common stock offering at $9.12 per share, for gross proceeds of $114 million.

Amid lingering questions about the fate of a broad mortgage servicing settlement, many see the creation of a joint task force to probe mortgage abuses as hope that those negotiating the settlement can work out their differences.