Corporate finance

The National Credit Union Administration is giving lenders and borrowers extra time to complete appraisals to ensure mortgages are still being completed despite the pandemic.

The letter written by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, was seen as a boost to Wall Street lobbying efforts seeking to quell the fallout of the coronavirus crisis on the mortgage market.

Declines in mortgage servicing rights valuations at JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo point to the resurgence of a dilemma that came up during the last downturn.

By helping borrowers now, banks hope customers can quickly catch up on payments once the coronavirus pandemic ends. If they can’t, interest income will remain low and charge-offs could pile up if the crisis drags on.

New Residential Investment, a real estate investment trust focused on housing, is selling a portfolio of debt with a face value of $6 billion.

The impending wave of loan delinquencies because of the coronavirus hurt private mortgage insurer earnings, but the companies will still have sufficient capital, a Keefe, Bruyette & Woods report said.

Title underwriters won’t be hit as hard by the coronavirus as other insurers, but related economic changes will challenge them, Fitch Ratings said, in assigning a negative outlook to the sector.

Independent mortgage bankers had their most profitable fourth quarter in seven years for originations, but the fallout from the coronavirus could upset the economics of the industry in the short term.

The central bank's sweeping actions suggest a cash shortage gripping sectors directly hit by the pandemic. Banks were supposed to be protected by Dodd-Frank but are still vulnerable to a funding domino effect.

The Federal Reserve committed Monday to conducting more asset purchases of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities and announced $300 billion in new financing for credit facilities.

Impac Mortgage Holdings decided a year ago to emphasize its non-qualified mortgage lending operations and placed the company in position to succeed when the housing market returns to normal.

Companies in the mortgage business were already focused on processing a lot of loans and generating efficiencies before the latest uptick in business hit.

With the return of volume and profitability to mortgage lending, it is no surprise that commercial banks are coming back to the market.

Altisource Portfolio Solutions lost nearly the same amount of money as it did for the whole year while it continued the business transition started in 2018.

An effort by the Federal Housing Finance Agency to examine membership rules for the Federal Home Loan Bank System is reigniting an argument over whether to allow more nonbanks in or impose tougher barriers.

CoreLogic's fourth-quarter earnings reflect the success of the transformation to an appraisal management company business model accelerated in the prior-year period.

The cancellation by New Residential of a money-losing subservicing agreement should benefit Ocwen's financial results going forward, the company said.

Mr. Cooper Group reported fourth-quarter net income of $461 million, aided by the recovery of its deferred tax asset and a positive mark-to-market on its servicing portfolio.

Equifax has released a series of bundled services aimed at helping financial institutions use data and analytics to manage tasks associated with the process of servicing mortgage loans.

The CEO of Freedom Mortgage, Stanley Middleman, provides his take on trends affecting independent mortgage bankers as well as the residential real estate finance industry at large.