Servicing

Small businesses seeking financing are in for a bit of good luck these days. Special Small Business Administration incentives, such as the waiver of certain fees, are still available until the end of the year, so now is the time to apply for financing. There are, however, a few caveats. While SBA loans are available, it may take a bit more work to obtain one and banks are requiring more information than they have in the past.

Thomas F. O'Neill, a founding principal of Sandler O'Neill Partners, unveiled plans to retire from the New York banking firm — but join a financial services company controlled by MBS co-inventor Lew Ranieri.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury broke above 3% briefly Thursday morning, a bad sign for mortgage rates, but there could be a glimmer of hope anyway: a pending home sales index created by the National Association of Realtors experienced an unexpected jump in October.

Commercial real estate loan prices resumed their upward movement of the past few months, rising from 80.5% at the end of September to 80.9% one month later, according to DebtX of Boston.

For many years IBM has eyed the mortgage industry curiously, a technology giant trying to find an angle on how it can make money from residential finance. After all, with 62 million outstanding loans in the United States, there must be a way for IBM to profit.

Interactive Mortgage Advisors this week completed the sale of a $1 billion package of bulk servicing rights and has a handful of other deals in the works, a sign that there are signs of life in the MSR market.

Tradeweb and three Wall Street firms this week launched technology designed to mitigate the risk of failed to-be-announced (TBA) MBS trades in situations where deals can be resolved by delivery through tri-party arrangements.

The 30-day plus delinquency rate on MBS backed by multifamily mortgages spiked by just over 100 basis points in November, reaching a new high of 15.8%, according to new figures compiled by Trepp LLC.

Freddie Mac believes its caseload of loan buyback requests from seller/servicers has already peaked, but Fannie Mae thinks its repurchase requests will continue to rise.

The stabilization of home prices during the summer is beginning to crumble, according to the Federal Reserve Board's November survey of economic conditions released Wednesday afternoon.