Finance

Old Republic International Corp.'s mortgage guaranty business lost $163 million for the fourth quarter and $678 million for the year, 48% worse and 160% worse than the same periods one year ago, as claims costs intensified throughout the year.

ISGN increased its available cash flow with a $20 million secured line of credit obtained from JPMorgan Chase, the mortgage technology and fulfillment outsourcing vendor announced Wednesday.

The Federal Reserve will not sell any of its massive holdings of agency MBS and Treasuries until 2015 as it strives to keep interest rates low, central bank officials said Wednesday afternoon.

Delinquencies on mortgages controlled by Freddie Mac rose to 3.58% in December, the highest reading in nine months for the GSE, and a sign that it likely will continue to post operating losses in the immediate quarters ahead.

President Obama's decision to create a new task force to investigate risky lending and securitization practices leading up to the financial crisis could complicate and delay a potential $25 billion settlement involving foreclosure and servicing abuses.

GNMA chief Ted Tozer has been trying in vain to get more mortgage firms to issue MBS, but Wells Fargo & Co. continues to increase its grip on the government market.

Citigroup recently told its mortgage correspondents that going forward it will only buy "low risk" loans. What's a low risk loan, you ask? Answer: any mortgage that has an almost zero chance of going south.

Former Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd, who was named last month in a mortgage-related SEC fraud suit, has officially resigned from publicly traded investment manager Fortress Investment Group and its board, ending a leave of absence.

Mortgage loan application volume declined by 5% on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ended Jan. 20, as interest rates on some fixed-rate loans rebounded from their all-time lows, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The results for the current survey include an adjustment to account for the Martin Luther King Day holiday.

Fannie Mae's final multifamily issuance numbers for 2011 are in and they reflect a 50% increase from the previous year, according to an executive at the government-sponsored enterprise.

The debate over the definition of the qualified residential mortgage slated for use in determining regulatory risk retention standards boils down to two key questions, John Walsh, the acting Comptroller of the Currency, said in a speech at the American Securitization Forum's conference in Las Vegas.

MountainView Servicing Group, Denver, is brokering a $129 million package of servicing rights guaranteed by the Government National Mortgage Association.

Recently we heard that the FDIC unloaded a $900 million pool of nonperforming and troubled notes, but the agency failed to release a press release on the deal. (It was a structured finance transaction.) In November 2010 the FDIC sold a $23 billion package of MSRs tied to the failed AmTrust Bank. No press release was issued on that deal either.

It would cost Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac almost $100 billion to write down the principal on the underwater loans they control to current market values, according to a new estimate released by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Fifth Third Bank reported that demands by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to repurchase bad loans have slowed, but the seller/servicer is seeing what it calls an "uptick" in file reviews by the GSEs on performing mortgages.

VantageScore Solutions has stated that 46 investors, who run the gamut, are now using its consumer credit score model in their risk and pricing models.

Five years back who would have ever thought that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be an issue in a GOP primary? To the uneducated and ignorant the housing crisis was caused by the two GSEs. To anyone who has been in this business for more than say, seven years, they know the housing implosion had multiple fathers, the GSEs being on a long list, many rungs below Wall Street.

Regulators and a Home Loan bank have asked First Horizon National Corp. for information about some of its securitizations.

Just when Redwood Trust was starting to look a bit like the Maytag repairman of the jumbo MBS market, we began to hear reports this week that two top 10 ranked banks are working on jumbo deals - for later in the year.

The growing number of community banks starting warehouse lending programs has to be gratifying to the executives at Titan Lenders Corp., Denver. It was just three years ago they were so concerned about the future of this business they called for Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to fill the need.