Secondary market

While some industry forecasts predicted origination volumes would fall 7% quarter-to-quarter in 4Q, early earnings numbers from Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citi and PNC Bank show they were down just 3% when purchased loans are excluded.

Industry watchers make their wildest guesses (more or less) about developments in real estate finance that could rock the industry in the upcoming months.

Michael Gramins, who a jury convicted in 2017, was among more than a half-dozen traders charged by federal prosecutors in Connecticut with misrepresenting the prices of mortgage-backed securities to clients in order to increase their firm’s profits and their bonuses.

Last year, smaller lenders were put at a slight disadvantage in terms of what they were charged in guarantee fees when they sold loans for cash.

The problem in the sector boils down to a lack of portability of data, whether it’s digital or contained in documents, that can be trusted between parties, LoanLogics Chief Product Officer Dave Parker argues.

The average per-loan profit margin remains incredibly strong, but the share of senior executives expecting it to fall has risen markedly.

Whether Ginnie issuance increases in the future may depend in part on the extent to which the Biden administration wishes to tap the FHA to promote affordable housing and homeownership.

If CMBS litigation picks up in earnest in the aftermath of the pandemic, lessons gleaned from over a decade of RMBS litigation could pay dividends, Bilzen Sumberg lawyers Philip Stein and Kenneth Duvall say.

The money lenders are making on each home loan hit another survey-record high in the third quarter, but it may not be quite as high going forward.

Even government-sponsored enterprise loans, which have seen forbearance rates drop for 24 weeks in a row, saw a slight uptick.