Servicing

A subsidiary of homebuilder Lennar Corp. completed its first closing of a real estate fund to invest in distressed real estate assets.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have resumed sales of foreclosed properties that were placed on hold in late September due to questions about improper affidavits used in the foreclosure process.

A former managing director and head of European residential mortgage- and asset-backed securities at Morgan Stanley is filling a somewhat similar role at Jefferies.

In an era of low interest rates, weak loan demand and unprecedented efforts by the Federal Reserve Board to pump liquidity into the economy, the demand for Federal Home Loan Bank advances has plummeted to a 10-year low, raising questions about the system's future as the government weighs a redesign of the housing finance sector.

Interactive Mortgage Advisors, Denver, is selling a $226 million portfolio of bulk Fannie Mae servicing rights for an undisclosed client.

The same old REO disposition model, multiplied across millions of REOs, threatens to convert hard-hit American neighborhoods into transient rental zones. Declining homeownership rates promise a new form of damage to communities already plagued by high vacancy rates, property abandonment, vandalism and underfunded tax rolls. Study after study links high owner occupancy rates to everything from improved educational achievement for children to decreased rates of crime. So when a neighborhood’s homeownership rate rapidly falls, the negative consequences multiply.

Fannie Mae is contemplating selling nonperforming mortgages out of its portfolio, offering the notes to the highest bidder, according to vendors and investors who have talked to the GSE about the plan.

National house prices will continue to decline through the first half of 2011, but local markets will experience varying degrees of decreases, according to Moody's Analytics.

Lender Processing Services reports that by the end of October 2010 the total U.S. foreclosure inventory rate reached 3.92%, marking an all time high in the size of the inventory.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has made a move that has prevented what otherwise might have been a shutdown of the securitized market in late January, according to the American Securitization Forum.