Mortgages

Bond insurer MBIA Inc. has admitted to making errors in its application to regulators seeking to split the company in two.

Interactive Mortgage Advisors is offering a $4.5 billion MSR package with another $1 billion in the works. Phoenix Capital is peddling $35 billion of MSRs for Bank of America - with more on that way.

FACTS - On Jan. 30, William Tro Goings of Sacramento, Calif., pleaded guilty in federal court to participating in a conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme that defrauded a failed Sugar Creek, Mo. bank of more than $8.5 million.

Despite a shadow inventory of 1.6 million seriously delinquent loans, and a huge inventory of foreclosures, nearly 50% of 900 housing markets tracked by CoreLogic registered price gains last year.

When it comes to mortgage problems, Bank of America and its largest rivals are hogging most of the headlines. But smaller banks are also struggling with high levels of delinquent loans that are holding back a housing recovery.

The mortgage insurance division of Genworth Financial is beginning to see a noticeable pick up in HARP refinancing applications, a sign that the '2.0' version of the program may finally be gaining traction.

How oppressive are distressed sales to the housing market? Try this: The top 50 sellers of homes are banks, according to Jonathan Smoke of Housing Intelligence, the research arm of the Hanley Wood publishing company.

In these times where dispensing consumer credit has been akin to doing it through an eyedropper, the use of alternative data sources is one way to possibly increase the flow of money, one proponent said.

The apartment sector is projected to lead the housing market on the road to recovery, but growth in the multifamily sector will be highly uneven, industry experts said last week in Orlando.

Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock Financial, is nobody's fool - not by a long shot. He cut his teeth at First Boston many moons ago, helped shape the MBS market, and then went on to create a financial services powerhouse: BlackRock

Often, companies adopt more aggressive compensation strategies hoping to maximize their competitiveness in the market. To do so, they will adopt practices that "sound" compliant but in actual practice clearly violate compensation rules. In other words, they have contracts that say one thing but practices that in fact violate the rules.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke called on regulators to "look carefully" at rules which diminish the origination of prudently underwritten mortgages, telling a gathering of home builders that the health of the housing market is central to the vitality of the economy as a whole.

Salt Lake City-based lender Primary Residential Mortgage Inc. has created a new “enterprise risk management” group with the goal of managing risk through the entire loan origination process and ensuring that the company has appropriate monitoring and evaluation policies.

MountainView Servicing Group, Denver, is auctioning off a $305 million package of Fannie Mae servicing rights for an undisclosed seller.

If the GSEs initiated a principal reduction program similar to the one outlined in the robo-signing settlement, roughly 650,000 borrowers could benefit, distressed sales would level off, and home values would “stabilize,” according to Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.

Although better multifamily performance numbers have been improving CMBS delinquencies overall, office and retail loans are setting record highs, with the latter surpassing the former for the first time in almost five years.

Break out the bubbly! The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that the unemployment rate in the U.S. dropped from 8.5% to 8.3%. According to BLS numbers, U.S. non-farm payrolls grew by 243,000 jobs in January, up from a revised 203,000 jobs in December 2011.

Will Clint Eastwood walk through the streets of Minneapolis, proclaiming how the U.S. mortgage industry is back? If you're not sure what I'm talking about, go see last weekend's Chrysler/Fiat commercial during the Super Bowl. (As an aside, I think the whole political take on that commercial has been blown way out of proportion.)

Although many megabanks have thrown their correspondent networks overboard, there's a new entrant in the sector: Impac Mortgage Holdings, Irvine, Calif., a once high flying 'alt-A' lender that survived the housing crash and rebuilt itself.

At the start of the time most people waste time conjuring-up goals and tasks they think will make a difference in their life. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's been proven time and again that most resolutions are ignored or just disappear after a few days (months for the real ambitious) of the new year.