Secondary markets

When Residential Capital Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this week it left behind a trail of unsecured creditors with claims totaling well over $1 billion, according to court documents.

The Federal Housing Administration—which holds title to 700,000 seriously delinquent mortgages—plans to ramp up its single-family nonperforming loan sale efforts, according to housing commissioner Carol Galante.

A pair of analysts at the Mortgage Bankers Association Secondary Market Conference said they don't believe there will be a private-label mortgage-backed securities product anytime soon.

Allonhill, a mortgage due diligence provider that two weeks ago lost a consulting contract with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, has given layoff notices to dozens of employees, according to industry consultants who were briefed on the matter.

REO assets represented one-third of the overall CMBS delinquency rate in April, reaching $11.1 billion in scheduled loan balance.

Citing the $2 billion loss at JPMorgan Chase, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is calling for the enactment of a new version of the Glass-Steagall Act.

Dissatisfaction is growing in Congress with the Obama administration’s decision to leave mortgage investors out of talks that led to a $25 billion settlement.

Dissatisfaction is growing in Congress with the Obama administration’s decision to leave mortgage investors out of talks that led to a $25 billion settlement.

John Robbins has created mortgage production platforms from scratch before, most notably with American Residential Mortgage and American Mortgage Network. But his latest venture, he admitted, was in at least one way a little more difficult because of how the industry environment has changed in the past few years.

Newcastle Investment Corp. said it will be a partner in Nationstar’s plan to purchase $374 billion of servicing rights from Residential Capital Corp. by investing upwards of $300 million in the “excess” servicing strip on the deal.

Matt Zames, the head of capital markets for JPMorgan Chase's mortgage banking division, as well as co-head of global fixed income in its investment bank, has been named the new chief investment officer for the company.

TriLyn has formed an investment management platform focused on opportunities in high-yield commercial real estate debt.

A group of Wall Street banks and ratings agencies told a federal court in Miami that “greed” and the need to grow earnings was responsible for the 2009 demise of Eastern Financial Florida CU, the one-time $2.4 billion credit union, not alleged fraud on their part in the sale of $100 million of risky financial derivatives known as collateralized debt obligations.

But what does the eventual resolution of ResCap really mean? Answer: A new, stronger competitor (Nationstar) could rise from the ashes. (If Dan Mudd was still at Fortress -- which owns a piece of Nationstar -- he might be considered the “Comeback Kid.”)

Assured Guaranty Ltd. posted a small profit for the first quarter of 2012 and last week announced a deal with Deutsche Bank over soured mortgage backed securities.

Congress is not likely to pass recently proposed legislation that would reform the Home Affordable Refinance Program and promote competition among mortgage servicers, according to analysts at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The California Association of Realtors and the California District Attorneys Association have launched a campaign to warn homeowners about the alarming increase in scams targeting foreclosure victims.

Although Nationstar has agreed to buy most of Residential Capital Corp.’s mortgage assets, the sale is by no means a done deal, according to ResCap CEO Tom Marano.

It’s not easy being a GSE, executives speaking as the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Secondary Market Conference in New York made clear last week.

The government controlled Ally Financial Monday morning said its board has voted to place Residential Capital LLC into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while it finalizes a deal to sell substantially all of its assets to Nationstar Mortgage for $4 billion. In total, 50 ResCap affiliates are affected by the filing.