Mortgage defaults

As the government shutdown enters its third week, mortgage servicers are activating the response plans they normally use during hurricanes and wildfires to assist federal workers who may have trouble paying their mortgages.

CoreLogic is exiting its loan origination software and default management operations over the next 24 months and instead accelerated plans to transform its appraisal management company unit.

Home retention actions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through the first three quarters of 2018 already eclipsed 2016 and 2017 while forfeitures kept declining, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Many servicers expect their Federal Housing Administration mortgage portfolios to grow in the next year or two, and that increase could coincide with an uptick in delinquencies, warns Altisource Portfolio Solutions.

Mortgage prepayment speeds fell to their lowest level in 10 years in November as rising interest rates took a toll on origination activity, according to Black Knight.

An agency report said servicing portfolios have shrunk by nearly half in 10 years as much of the mortgage market has shifted to nonbanks.

Other than in areas hit by natural disasters, delinquency rates are falling with help from a healthier labor market, but a rise in riskier lending habits could signal trouble for borrowers should housing conditions change, according to CoreLogic.

Ditech Holding Corp. is proposing to pay $257,000 and improve governance to settle a stockholder lawsuit alleging that a lack of oversight allowed improprieties to occur in several mortgage-related business lines.

The government-sponsored enterprises are suspending eviction lockouts for the holiday season.

Weakening prices from the most expensive metro areas caused the first decline in available equity since the market started recovering from the housing crisis, according to Black Knight.

Foreclosure activity is down nationwide from a year ago, but certain local housing markets are telling a different story.

The government-sponsored enterprises sold fewer nonperforming loans in the first half, but the drop-off in the number of sales year-to-year is less severe than it was in 2017 as a whole.

Private mortgage insurers are moving away from traditional rate cards in favor of more granular risk-based pricing to make their products more competitive and efficient for lenders.

Fannie Mae completed 10 traditional and front-end credit risk insurance transactions during 2018, sharing $2.6 billion of risk, including $192 million in its final deal of the year.

Excellent credit quality and strong performance of post-housing-crisis originations resulted in a steep decline in foreclosure starts in September, according to Black Knight.

Housing policies are helping the number of vacant foreclosure homes drop, which could also mean homebuyers have been taking advantage of these properties as inventory continues to be constrained, according to Attom Data Solutions.

Growing home prices plus rising interest rates are putting a damper on mortgage lending, which pushes the market to seek out less qualified borrowers and increases the risk of fraud.

After falling to its lowest level in over 12 years, servicers expected September's surge in delinquencies following the damage of Hurricane Florence, according to Black Knight.

Providing borrowers with an incentive to create financial reserves after closing is a better tool to prevent mortgage loan defaults than measures taken at underwriting, a JPMorgan Chase Institute study declared.

MGIC Investment Corp.'s quarterly earnings were again driven by better-than-expected loss development, and those favorable results should be seen in the other private mortgage insurers' results as well, an industry analyst said.