Servicing

Ginnie Mae has repurchased $4.5 billion of delinquent loans out of securitized pools this year in an effort to reduce losses on servicing portfolios it inherited from LendAmerica and other defaulted issuers.

Single-family housing starts jumped almost 7% in November from the prior month to the highest level since April.

Bank of America Corp. has begun potential settlement discussions with large institutional investors who bought MBS that later underperformed, causing losses at these entities, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Standard & Poor's has placed 1,196 ratings on 129 U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities re-REMIC transactions on CreditWatch with negative implications until it finishes correcting its assessments of timely interest payments in some circumstances.

Ginnie Mae issuers securitized $34.4 billion of government guaranteed residential mortgages in November, down 3% from the prior month.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System this week suspended its mortgage program, citing rising delinquencies and declining usage by its target audience: state workers. The program's administrator is Citigroup.

Fitch Ratings, citing "strong U.S. government support," Wednesday affirmed its long-term issuer default ratings on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at 'AAA.'

Differences in judicial and non-judicial foreclosures over the past several months have meant some securitized private-label subprime/alt-A mortgages made to borrowers in the what is still considered a relatively weak—though improving—California market, for example, are actually exhibiting better performance in some ways as a group than their counterparts in the relatively stronger New York market.

The decline in foreign investor holdings of agency mortgage-backed securities continued in October, contributing to an overall year-to-date decline through that time of $57 billion, according to a Credit Suisse strategist.

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Des Moines, Iowa, is closing its wholesale lending operations center in Concord, Calif., saying it can get better efficiencies of scale by shifting the work to another wholesale loan processing center located in Irvine, Calif.