THIS JUST IN: Late this past week there was a bunch of chatter about the nonperforming loan market including a rumor that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. might be offering for auction a $1.4 billion package of troubled whole loans, including some FHA product. An agency spokesman had not returned a telephone call as this column went to press. As one nonperforming loan investor told us, "They have a bunch of that crap to sell." Meanwhile we understand that Bank of America has been quietly disposing of some of its troubled whole loans (which likely came from Countrywide) by selling them to two different hedge funds, one of which goes by the name of Waterfall. (At least $2 billion may've been sold.) We Googled the name Waterfall and could only come up with a Waterfall Investments in York, Ontario. Stay tuned. Also, in Monday's National Mortgage News we're publishing a story about a smaller pool being offered by BoA. Don't subscribe? Call 800-221-1809...
Harlem is hot. Not only does former President Bill Clinton keep office space there but the FDIC this past week held a MWOB (Minority and Women Owned Businesses) seminar for prospective contractors who want a piece of the agency's bank and mortgage pie. One attendee told us that there were two rooms at the seminar, one for legal and one for financial services, the latter of which 100 or so people attended. The following work is available: asset management, underwriters, servicers, environmental specialists, cash management and much more. So, if you're looking to make some money off of Uncle, sign up. One last tidbit picked up at the seminar: FDIC officials made it clear that they want to hire lots of contractors. Why? Answer: because it wants to avoid hiring a bunch of permanent full-timers. During the height of the S&L/bank crisis 20 years ago the FDIC and Resolution Trust Corp. employed 20,000 or so. Eventually they had to whittle that number down to 5,000. Meanwhile, the agency has yet to decide on an RFP (request for proposal) that closed in late May. It's for asset management services...
The Mortgage Bankers Association was none too pleased that we reported it recently met with the FDIC about the state of the warehouse lending industry. Topic "A" was likely Colonial Bancgroup, which is slated for sale to BB&T. The good news is that BB&T already has a small warehouse group and understands the business. We're starting to hear stories about warehouse abuses such as one bank lender charging non-banks a $10,000 application fee. (For the full story read Monday's NMN.) Meanwhile, Joe Murin's departure as GNMA chief could spell bad news for GNMA's involvement in warehouse lending. See the story on the NMN website. Rumors that Mr. Murin was stepping down started a few weeks ago...
Just as an aside, this past week I heard so many interesting stories about warehouse lending that I was tempted to go and start National Warehouse Lending News...
Well, it's finally ready:
LoanMarket.net of Irvine is ready to add 1,000 to 2,000 new loans onto its Internet auction website in the coming week - or so we were told by company principal Jeff Freud...
Before I went on vacation recently I wrote a story about Jess Lederman's credit union brokering jumbo loans. I received a handful of e-mails from readers who wanted to contact Jess. His e-mail is
Freddie Mac has refinanced nearly 29,000 loans under the Obama administration's Home Affordable Refinance Program, which is designed to give borrowers with loan-to-value ratios above 80% a chance to refinance and lower their mortgage payments...
We keep hearing talk that American International Group is going to peel off and securitize another chunk of the $9 billion whole loan portfolio belonging to its American General Financial Services unit in Indiana...
Essent Guaranty, a new mortgage insurer founded to bring private capital to support America's housing finance system, said it received approval from the Pennsylvania Insurance Department to write mortgage insurance...
WASHINGTON NEWS: The Treasury Department is continuing to do research into the possibility of lenders modifying second liens. But the agency itself isn't doing the research - it has asked Fannie Mae to do the research for them, or so we were told by someone familiar with the matter. "That's what happens when you're owned by the government," said one official close to the situation...
MORTGAGE PEOPLE: The White House has named Ed DeMarco acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Departing director James Lockhart had wanted out for quite some time.
DATA NOTICE: Even though we have just launched our new MortgageStats.com product you can still subscribe to the Quarterly Data Report, a spreadsheet product that provides readers with quarterly rankings on the nation's top lenders and servicers. There's also a companion product called the "Alt-QDR" which provides rankings on second liens, jumbos and much more. Again, shoot an e-mail to
