Servicing

A 'qualified residential mortgage' rule which does not include a mandate for mortgage insurance will not necessarily harm the MI industry, according to a new report from FBR Capital Markets.

FCI Lender Services, Anaheim Hills, Calif., said it sold roughly $8 million of problem mortgages through its auction website during the past three months.

Can there be any doubt that servicing holds sway over the current mortgage market? 2010 saw 1.3 million foreclosures, another record, with predictions of higher yet in 2011. The robo-signing scandal threw an unwelcome spotlight on the shoddy foreclosure practices of the big servicers. Government programs like HAMP and HAFA tried valiantly all last year to make a difference in the default logjam (without quite achieving it).

Nearly 45% of banks surveyed by the Federal Reserve increased their holdings of single-family loans in the second-half of 2010 – and half are now forecasting they will increase their holdings even more as the year progresses.

Fannie Mae has added an expanded multifamily mortgage-backed securities execution that will allow DUS Mega deals to be syndicated and managed by broker-dealers with the aim of offering them in issuance sizes similar to DUS REMICs.

Citigroup late last month sold a $517 million portfolio of nonperforming mortgages, according to market sources.

The residential mortgage division of Ally Financial earned $123 million in the fourth quarter, a slight decline from 3Q but a major improvement over the same period last year when it lost $3.3 billion.

Impac Mortgage Holdings, a nonbank and former alt-A lender that survived the housing bust, has big plans for the future: not only does it plan to fund $1.2 billion in loans this year, it's anticipating that 80% of it will come from loan brokers.

Fitch Ratings has downgraded 759 speculative grade bonds in 405 nonconforming U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities transactions to “Dsf,” indicating they have taken principal writedowns.

December was the best month of 2010 for private mortgage insurance companies in terms of primary new insurance written, and the second worst of the year in terms of the cure/default ratio.