Secondary markets

The real estate investment trust recorded a consecutive-quarter earnings gain on Thursday that reflects slower prepayments in its agency adjustable-rate mortgage portfolio during the last three months of 2013.

Chances that Congress will move this year to wind down or transform the GSEs are dimming as lawmakers confront a split among Senate Democrats and a change at the regulator of the mortgage finance companies.

The company said it bought Morgan’s European real estate loan servicing business, boosting the amount the U.K. debt manager oversees to about $13 billion.

PHH Corp. was the largest percentage gainer among Mortgage Industry Equity Composite stocks one day after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleged it participated in a mortgage insurance kickback scheme.

BlackRock Solutions as an advisor is offering more than $2 billion in bonds from 234 nonagency RMBS that the agency acquired when bailing out ING Groep.

Most mortgage-backed securities from the boom years are affected by a ruling that broadly places a statute of limitations on loan representations and warranties.

Most of the 4% year-over-year increase came in the first part of 2013.

The news of the $10 billion cut in purchases led 14 of the 17 Mortgage Industry Equity Composite stocks to close lower.

President Obama hit on several important issues for bankers in his annual address to Congress Tuesday night, including mortgage finance reform, though as expected financial services issues largely took a backseat to other national concerns, like unemployment and the minimum wage.

The homebuilder has the largest percentage increase among Mortgage Industry Equity Composite stocks one day after it received an analyst downgrade.

The mortgage insurer is one of only two Mortgage Industry Equity Composite stocks to close higher on Monday.

The provision includes about $3.5 billion for lawsuits and fines tied mostly to the sale of $91 billion of mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007.

Interactive Mortgage Advisors is exclusively brokering the mortgage servicing rights, which have a wide geographic dispersion outside of a less than 19% Texas concentration and less than 10% California concentration.

The consumer must purchase the flood coverage in combination with homeowners insurance. The company lays claim to being the first admitted carrier in the state to offer such coverage post-Biggert-Waters.

There have been low levels of homebuilding in Nevada, Arizona, California and Florida due to the glut of cheap, distressed homes that flooded the market during the recession.

Democrats want the new FHFA director to lift suspension on GSE funds to build and preserve affordable rental units.

A continuing stumbling block is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are unhappy about having their liens on properties subordinate to PACE loans, a DBRS executive said at ABS West.

Current mortgage lending growth assessments are consistently pointing in one direction: jumbo loans, and to a lesser extent home equity credit lines. But these loans make sense only in certain areas.

GSE reports that 2013 loan acquisitions are off by less than 1% from 2012.

Players in the REO-to-rental space see a bright future in pooling the cash flows of many operators into conduit transactions, but some believe the market is getting ahead of itself.