Servicing

The residential mortgage banking business at PNC Financial Services Group Inc., Pittsburgh, earned $71 million in the first quarter 2011, up from $3 million in the fourth quarter 2010 but down from $78 million in the first quarter 2010.

Home prices fell 1.6% in February after a 1% dip in January as the GSE regulator's house price index hit yet another new low since values reached their peak in April 2007.

Not all mortgage lenders saw loan production fall off the table in the first quarter. Astoria Financial Corp., Lake Success, N.Y. funded $707 million of residential loans for its portfolio in 1Q, a 10% jump from 4Q.

Standard & Poor's late Wednesday revised its outlook on the unsecured debt issuances of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank System to "negative" from "stable" while maintaining their AAA credit rating.

The California law firm Kassas Law has started a prelitigation service to help homeowners who have trouble securing loan modifications from banks.

Hudson City Bancorp, one of the largest correspondent lenders in the Northeast, shed roughly $8.6 billion of MBS in the first quarter as it moved to reduce its interest risk at the demand of regulators.

The CBOE Futures Exchange and Radar Logic have agreed to develop and list tradable residential property futures.

Loan officers are still licking their wounds in the wake of the Federal Reserve's new (restrictive) loan officer compensation rules, but if anyone's celebrating it's the folks whose job is to actually hire LOs, and their wholesale counterparts, account executives.

BlackRock Inc. has named a new global head of real estate to oversee both debt and equity investment products.

Wells Fargo & Co., which dominates the nation's residential lending market, saw its home fundings tumble by 34% to $84 billion in the first quarter as higher rates took a bite out of refinancings.