National Mortgage News articles from February 2008

National Mortgage News archives from February 2008

Sample: Vols Fall 43%.
February 4, 2008... WASHINGTON -- Residential lenders - to the surprise of few - saw their loan production fall by 43% in the fourth quarter compared to the year-ago period, according to preliminary survey figures compiled by this newspaper. Lenders reporting...

CFC Tallies 4Q Loss.
February 4, 2008... CALABASAS, CA -- Countrywide Financial Corp. lost $422 million in the fourth quarter, bringing the company's full-year 2007 loss to $704 million as deteriorating credit continued to pressure the company. But investors largely shrugged it...

MBIA Takes 4Q Loss.
February 4, 2008... ARMONK, NY -- MBIA Inc., whose credit guarantees stand behind billions of dollars in subprime mortgage bonds, posted a $2.3 billion loss in the fourth quarter, blaming the problem partly on the performance of second liens and "CDO squared"...

S&P Downgrades Mount.
February 4, 2008... NEW YORK -- Standard & Poor's Ratings Services has downgraded 3,787 classes from U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities that are collateralized by first-lien subprime mortgage loans rated between January 2006 and June 2007. S&P also...

Record Mortgage SARs Seen.
February 4, 2008... WASHINGTON -- In the first fiscal quarter of this year financial institutions filed a record 15,000 suspicious activity reports with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, passing on allegations of mortgage fraud and other criminal behavior. ...

Sambol Gets BoA-CFC Post.
February 4, 2008... CHARLOTTE, NC -- David Sambol has been chosen to head up the combined consumer mortgage business of Bank of America Corp. here once it completes its acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp., Calabasas, Calif., which is expected in the third...

Citi to SellOr Close FCS.
February 4, 2008... NEW YORK -- Citigroup, decimated by billions of dollars in writedowns on subprime assets, has decided to close its warehouse lending division, First Collateral Services, Concord, Calif. The company has contacted investment bankers about...

Residential Originators In 4Q (Sample).
February 4, 2008... Origination Volume % Organization Name Location 4Q 07 4Q 06 Change America First CU Riverdale, UT $85 $62 37% Amerifund Lending Group West Lake Village, CA $109 $250 -56% Bank Mutual Corp Milwaukee,...

Fiserv Sells DataTrac Back to Original Owner.
February 4, 2008... SAN DIEGO -- In a consolidation play, Fiserv has sold Del Mar DataTrac Inc. to TVC Capital LLC here. TVC is private equity fund focused on software acquisitions and investments. In an interesting twist, TVC owned Del Mar before it was sold...

Contract Underwriter Clayton Granted Immunity in Probe.
February 4, 2008... WASHINGTON -- New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo has granted Clayton Holdings immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing information on the due diligence work it conducted for Wall Street firms that securitized subprime mortgages...

'Use AutomationMore Wisely'.
February 4, 2008... ORLANDO, FL -- In 2007, it was reported that 75% of all loans were approved via a decision engine and the rendering could be done in 12 seconds, according to Wachovia SVP Steven Daniels. To get rid of the bad taste of kamikaze underwriting...

Editorial: Panic Attack.(Editorial)
February 4, 2008... It's time for everybody to take a deep breath. (Into a paper bag if necessary!) The spread of the subprime mortgage crisis into world markets, presaged by the European Central Bank's recent unprecedented infusion of half a trillion dollars...

Open Forum: The Home Owners' Loan Corp.
February 4, 2008... Mr. Pollocks recent financial services outlook paper, Crisis Intervention in Housing Finance, on the Home Owners Loan Corp. is presented as our Open Forum. First of two parts. The Home Owners Loan Corp., little known or remembered now, has...

Open Forum: Fed Cuts Rates by 50 Basis Points.
February 4, 2008... WASHINGTON -- The Federal Open Market Committee last week dropped the fed funds and discount rates 50 basis points at its regular meeting. "Financial markets remain under considerable stress, and credit has tightened further for some...

Existing Homes Sales Decline 13%.(Financial report)
February 4, 2008... WASHINGTON -- Existing single-family home sales fell by 13% in 2007 and new home sales plummeted 26.4%, but many economists expect sales will bottom out this summer while house prices continue to fall. Fannie Mae economists expected...

Eyeing the Value of Originating FHA in the Current Market.
February 4, 2008... Hkitty76: I am in a battle currently with my boss and I need your opinions. We were going to get set up with FHA, but suddenly he doesn't want to go through it because it will be too much work and the processing of the file is tough. He's just...

Comerica Net Income Falls.(Financial report)
February 4, 2008... DALLAS -- Comerica Inc.'s fourth-quarter net income dropped by more than a third when compared to both the third quarter of 2007 and the fourth quarter of 2006. The company said that fourth-quarter earnings were largely impacted by a decrease...

GSE Preferred Securities Hit Seen.
February 4, 2008... SOUTH BEND, IN -- In an indication of how widespread mortgage-related problems spread late last year, even banks that avoided subprime lending are taking charges on mortgage assets, including the preferred securities of Fannie Mae and Freddie...

Panel: Don't Shy Away from Tech Innovation.
February 4, 2008... ORLANDO, FL -- As the industry goes through this downturn, panelists at the 11th Annual SourceMedia Mortgage Technology Conference here stressed that this is not the time for the industry to shy away from technology innovation. In fact, all...

Roundup: Certain CMLT Pass-Through Classes Downgraded.
February 4, 2008... NEW YORK -- Thirty-eight classes of Citigroup Mortgage Loan Trust mortgage pass-through certificates have been downgraded by Fitch Ratings. Fitch also placed 10 classes on Rating Watch Negative, upgraded five classes and affirmed the...

Clarification.(Correction notice)
February 4, 2008... Fitch Ratings has placed 188 tranches from 18 commercial real estate collateralized debt obligations, representing $8.4 billion in total, on Rating Watch Negative, following a review in its surveillance methodology. Analysts at the rating...

Ginnie Funds Top Rankings.
February 4, 2008... NEW YORK -- Mutual funds invested mainly in Ginnie Mae securities topped the rankings of mortgage funds in 2007, reporting an average cumulative total return of 6.30%, according to data from Lipper Inc., New York. Second place went to...

Indices PointTo Price Drop.
February 4, 2008... NEW YORK -- Two credit rating agencies report that commercial real estate indices they maintain point to a decline in commercial real estate prices. Standard & Poor's said that October results on its S&P/GRA commercial real estate indices...

GGP Assures that Its Capital Position Is Strong in Wake of Rumors.
February 4, 2008... CHICAGO -- General Growth Properties, a retail real estate investment trust, has been denying news reports and blog write-ups alleging that the REIT may default on its debt obligations or file for bankruptcy. In a release addressing these...

Bank to Grow CRE Lending.
February 4, 2008... WAYCROSS, GA -- Atlantic Coast Bank is looking to expand its commercial real estate lending activity and has initiated some personnel changes to support this move. The bank has identified CRE lending as a "key strategic growth area" as it...

MRC Seeing Opportunity in Short-Term Bridge Loan Funding.
February 4, 2008... NEW YORK -- Madison Realty Capital, a private commercial real estate lender, similar to a hedge fund, is seeing opportunity in the current environment. With the recent pullback in the capital markets for commercial mortgage loan...

Reverse Mortgage Lending: Coming of Age.
February 4, 2008... An inordinate number of potential borrowers are turning 62, the age of eligibility for the government-backed Home Equity Conversion Mortgage that dominates the reverse mortgage market, and this alone would make the products - which allow...

Loan Woes Lead to New Market Tech Need.
February 4, 2008... With volume falling about 20% last year and another 20% this year if all the projections end up being true, lenders need new loan products to reach out to new markets if they're going to survive. Given the credit crunch and subprime issues,...

Reverse Mortgages Heat Up as Brokers' Options Narrow.
February 4, 2008... Not only is the reverse mortgage hot, "a lot of people believe it is the only product out there," the chief operating officer of Reverse Mortgage Solutions Inc., Spring, Texas, said. There is a lot of movement towards this product from mortgage...

Jack Kemp Speaks for Generation.
February 4, 2008... ATLANTA -- Jack Kemp, former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, nine-term congressman, vice presidential candidate and professional football quarterback, is now a spokesman for reverse mortgage lender Generation...

House Passes Stimulus Bill.
February 4, 2008... WASHINGTON -- The House passed a $146 billion economic stimulus bill last week that temporarily increases the loan limits on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration in high-cost areas. The Senate is expected to go...

'Minorities More Likely to Have Subprime Loans'.
February 4, 2008... NEW YORK -- In areas where banks do not have branches, minority borrowers, such as African-Americans and Latinos, are more likely to have subprime loans than those in white neighborhoods, according to speakers on the "The Subprime Mortgage...

CFC Totally Abandons Using CP.
February 4, 2008... CALABASAS, CA -- Countrywide Financial Corp. has completely abandoned using commercial paper borrowings to fund its operations and instead is relying on hefty advances from the Federal Home Loan Bank System, according to its fourth-quarter...

Report Eyes Crunch's CRE Impact.
February 4, 2008... NEW YORK -- Although the commercial real estate sector is better equipped to handle the impact of an ongoing credit crunch than it has been in the past, returns are likely to be down in 2008, according to a report from Deloitte Consulting's...

Mortgage Woes Affect Banks.
February 4, 2008... NEW YORK -- For a pair of banks headquartered in the mid-Atlantic region, mortgage-related charges had a negative affect on their fourth-quarter results. At Philadelphia-based Sovereign Bancorp, the company had a net loss of $1.6 billion,...

Traditional Multifamily Sources Picking Up Market Slack.
February 4, 2008... NEW YORK -- In an environment in which conduit lenders are not active, traditional sources of multifamily lending are picking up the slack. CB Richard Ellis for one has added a HUD/FHA-insured multifamily and health care lending...

People.
February 4, 2008... CALIFORNIA Garden Grove-Susie Phillips has joined Informative Research as the company's vice president of strategic planning and business development. Prior to joining Informative Research, Ms. Phillips spent 10 years in production...

Tech Can Aid in Tough Market.
February 4, 2008... ORLANDO, FL -- As more and more lenders shut their doors and overall volume slips, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Several panelists at the 11th Annual SourceMedia Mortgage Technology Conference here shared concrete strategies that can...

Ellie Releases Custom/Banker 3.0.
February 4, 2008... ORLANDO, FL -- Ellie Mae has released its Encompass Banker Edition 3.0 and Encompass Custom Edition 3.0. Encompass Custom is offered as an LOS with extensive configurability, while Encompass Banker is Ellie Mae's entry into the ranks of...

OOMC Asset Buy Seen.
February 11, 2008... KANSAS CITY, MO -- H&R Block here has found a buyer for the $61 billion subprime servicing portfolio of its Option One Mortgage Corp. unit, according to investment banking sources. At press time, it was unclear which bidder had won the...

Data: Brokerages Drop 34%.
February 11, 2008... WASHINGTON -- David Olson of Wholesale Access - a man who has made his living from studying loan brokers - said last week that the future for third-party intermediaries looks downright bleak. According to research conducted by Wholesale...

No. Of Loan Brokerage Firms At Year-End.
February 11, 2008... Period # of Mortgage Percentage Change Ending Brokerage Firms From Prior Period 2007 35,000 (34%) 2006 53,000 (2%) 2005 54,000 (2%) 2000 30,000 (9%) 1995 23,000 15% Notes: A...

FHA to Up Premiums?
February 11, 2008... WASHINGTON -- Deteriorating market conditions and adverse loan performance could force the Federal Housing Administration to raise its insurance premiums later this year if Congress doesn't give the agency more tools to manage its risks,...

GSE Plans New Multifamily Program.
February 11, 2008... NEW YORK -- Freddie Mac is launching a new program to securitize multifamily mortgages on a regular basis by buying and pooling the loans and then securitizing them through a broker/dealer. Mike May, Freddie Mac's senior vice president of...

Lenders See Refi Spike.
February 11, 2008... ST. LOUIS -- The recent drop in interest rates combined with relatively low home prices has driven up mortgage refinance applications in many markets across the country. And for the last two or three weeks, lenders have seen spikes in refis....

Thornburg: Profit Returns.
February 11, 2008... SANTA FE, NM -- Single-family residential mortgage lender Thornburg Mortgage Inc. here returned to profitability in the fourth quarter with net income before preferred stock dividends of $64.8 million, down 19% from the $80.3 million for the...

Commercial Volumes In 4Q '07 (A Sample).
February 11, 2008... Organization Name Location 4Q 07 Vol. 4Q 06 Vol. % Change Wachovia Charlotte, NC $11,371 $24,322 -53% Key Bank Real Estate Capital Cleveland, OH $5,556 $6,861 -19% Principal Real Estate Investors LLC Des Moines, IA...

Rejections a Question in Refis.
February 11, 2008... WASHINGTON -- Expectations are growing that the Federal Reserve's rate cuts have set the stage for a refinancing boom that could bolster struggling mortgage companies and help a lot of borrowers get into safer and lower-cost mortgages. ...

Loan Limit Hike Could Take Months.
February 11, 2008... WASHINGTON -- After Congress passes the economic stimulus bill, it may take another two months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac begin buying jumbo loans, according to the GSEs' regulator. The final stimulus bill is expected to increase the...

GFE Move by Month-End?
February 11, 2008... WASHINGTON -- HUD's long-awaited redesign of the good-faith estimate should be available to everyone and published in the Federal Register by the end of February, according to a Department of Housing and Urban Development official. The...

LendingTree Posts Huge Loss.(Financial report)
February 11, 2008... NEW YORK -- The LendingTree posted a stunning $502 million loss in the fourth quarter, compared to a net profit of $14 million a year ago. The company's publicly traded parent, IAC/Interactive Corp., New York, wrote down the value of the...

ResCap Loss Pushes GMAC Financial Services into the Red.(Financial report)
February 11, 2008... NEW YORK -- A big loss at subsidiary Residential Capital, which has been pummeled by the subprime mortgage crisis, pushed GMAC Financial Services into the red for the fourth quarter of 2007. GMAC attributed its $724 million fourth-quarter loss...

PHA Suit Eyes HUD Chief.
February 11, 2008... WASHINGTON -- The Philadelphia Housing Authority, in a recent lawsuit, accuses U.S. housing secretary Alphonso Jackson of taking retaliatory action against the agency because it would not transfer, at a steep discount, a $2 million piece of...

Editorial: No Silver Bullets.(Editorial)(Conference notes)
February 11, 2008... "Do more with less." That's the new mantra of mortgage technology, according to a fascinating workshop at the recent SourceMedia Mortgage Technology Conference in Orlando, Fla. Speaker Dave Matthews, SVP and CIO of the Federal Home Loan...

HOLC Offers Clues to Recovery.
February 11, 2008... Mr. Pollocks recent financial services outlook paper, Crisis Intervention in Housing Finance, on the Home Owners Loan Corp. is presented as our Open Forum. Second of two parts. By the spring of 1933, said the principal historian of HOLC,...

Rating Overhaul Needed but Could Lead to More Pressure.
February 11, 2008... Rating agencies last week separately warned that they are continuing to revise certain policies and procedures in reaction to unexpectedly high U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities losses, putting pressure on the ratings of certain...

Most Commercial/Multifamily Volumes Fall, Except at GSEs.
February 11, 2008... ORLANDO, FL -- Commercial and multifamily originations were down 16% in the fourth quarter, compared to the 2006 fourth quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported at its commercial and multifamily real estate finance convention here....

Commercial RE Price Increases May Not Be as High.
February 11, 2008... WASHINGTON -- Commercial property prices are not likely to go up in 2008 as much as they did in previous years, according to the National Association of Realtors. It is likely that property prices will soften considering that...

Weak Housing Market Fuels Rise in Nonperforming Assets.
February 11, 2008... NEW YORK -- Banks across the country are seeing the recovery of real estate-owned assets affect their non-interest expenses. Sierra Bancorp, Porterville, Calif., reported nonperforming assets increased by almost $9 million during 2007,...

New Vendor Offers Storage as Online Service.
February 11, 2008... AUSTIN, TX -- As lenders look to seriously embrace paperless processing this year as a way to cut costs and gain efficiencies, they'll need a place to store all those imaged files. Seeing the need to fill this gap for both imaged files now and...

Citi Pays Premium for PCLender.
February 11, 2008... HONOLULU -- Given an increased emphasis on loan quality, certain lenders have decided to somewhat endorse technology that they trust by offering correspondents a discount if they use approved loan origination systems. Along this vein, PCLender,...

VirPack to Offer Web-Hosted Vault.
February 11, 2008... VIENNA, VA -- VirPack here has released a new hosted Web-based document management and electronic loan delivery platform called VirPack Vault. The product, aimed at brokers and lenders alike, responds to demands from some VirPack users for...

Firm's Earnings Rise as Mortgage Unit Grows.(Financial report)
February 11, 2008... CHESAPEAKE, VA -- Monarch Financial Holdings Inc., the bank holding company for Monarch Bank, saw record quarterly net income and continued strong loan and asset growth. While other players are cutting back their mortgage operations in the...

Franklin Credit Delays Reporting Again.
February 11, 2008... JERSEY CITY, NJ -- Franklin Credit Management Corp. has again delayed its financial report for the third quarter of last year and subsequent periods. The company, which had previously said that its financial reporting would be delayed...

Roundup: Some Aussie MBS with PMI Exposure on Review.
February 11, 2008... NEW YORK -- The Sydney office of Moody's Investors Service here placed on review for possible downgrade 325 tranches from 144 Australian residential mortgage-backed securities deals totaling 83 billion Australian dollars ($74 billion) following...

US Bancorp Net Income Falls.(Financial report)
February 11, 2008... MINNEAPOLIS -- U.S. Bancorp here reported a drop in net income of more than 20% in the fourth quarter of 2007 as compared to the same period the year before. The company cited the challenging economic environment facing the financial services...

Shut Subprime Affects H&R Staff.
February 11, 2008... KANSAS CITY, MO -- Shutting its subprime mortgage business will result in staffing reductions in the headquarters support staff at H&R Block Inc. here. By April 30, Block expects to eliminate 325 filled and 180 open positions, or 23% of...

MA Home Sales Drop Below 3,600 for First Time in 16 Years.
February 11, 2008... BOSTON -- In November, Massachusetts reached an ominous milestone. It was the first time in 16 years that the state had seen less than 3,600 sales of single-family homes. Home sales fell by a double-digit percentage for the third month in a row...

Stay In Home Sees Growth.
February 11, 2008... BELLEVUE, WA -- As part of its long-term strategy to expand its presence in the reverse mortgage lending market, as well as take advantage of the overall growth within the market, a financial advisory and advocacy firm based here that educates...

'GSE Loss Estimates Too High'.
February 11, 2008... WASHINGTON -- GSE regulator James Lockhart last week said a $16 billion loss estimate made on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by a Credit Suisse analyst is "too high." Two weeks ago, CS analyst Moshe Orenbuch said the two could face $16 billion in...

Law Change May Affect NY Buyers.
February 11, 2008... WASHINGTON -- A proposed change in the bankruptcy law that would allow courts to write down the value of home mortgages in the event of bankruptcy by the borrower would have cost homebuyers in New York more than $2,989 if it had been law in...

CMBS Are Down but Are Likely to Come Back.
February 11, 2008... ORLANDO, FL -- Commercial mortgage securitizations are down, in the aftermath of the subprime-mortgage-induced credit crunch, but they are likely to come back. In the meantime, portfolio lenders have an advantage over securitization lenders....

Fitch Enhances RMBS Default/Loss Model.
February 11, 2008... NEW YORK -- Fitch has made enhancements to ResiLogic, its mortgage default and loss model for U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities. Fitch said the enhancements are designed to further its goal of incorporating a "robust forecast" of...

People.
February 11, 2008... ARIZONA Phoenix-Community Bank of Arizona said that financial lenders Ivy Voss and Laurie Hallums have joined the commercial real estate lending division at the bank's Central Avenue location. Ms. Voss has assumed the position of...

Nehemiah Optimistic for DPA.
February 11, 2008... SACRAMENTO, CA -- Nehemiah Corp. of America here, the nation's pioneer of the private downpayment assistance gift, celebrated 10 years of service during which it has provided over $1 billion in DPA funds that helped over 250,000 minority and...

OCC: Size Up CRE Portfolios.
February 11, 2008... WASHINGTON -- The Comptroller of the Currency is warning national banks to size up their commercial real estate portfolios before his examiners start knocking on their doors. Examiners are going to be taking a hard look at CRE portfolios,...

JPM Adds Warehouse.
February 18, 2008... NEW YORK -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to purchase what it calls "certain intellectual property" belonging to Washington Mutual's warehouse lending division and is in the process of making job offers to some of the unit's warehouse...

FHA Aims at Seriously Overdue.
February 18, 2008... WASHINGTON -- Now that the FHA Secure program has fallen short in helping slightly delinquent subprime borrowers, proposals are being floated to expand the Federal Housing Administration program to refinance a growing number of seriously...

NAHB Cuts Off PACs.
February 18, 2008... ORLANDO, FL -- The politically powerful National Association of Home Builders is taking unprecedented steps to persuade current and future lawmakers to put a tax credit in place for homebuyers who help knock down the record inventory of unsold...

Jumbos Get a Boost.
February 18, 2008... WASHINGTON -- Lenders will be able to originate jumbo loans for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration pretty soon now that President Bush has signed the economic stimulus bill. The bill passed by Congress...

Morgan Shuts Most of Saxon.
February 18, 2008... NEW YORK -- Morgan Stanley, which 18 months ago bought subprime lender Saxon Capital for $706 million, last week closed most of the unit's third-party production offices but vowed to keep its servicing operation open. Saxon originated...

Freddie Gives MIs a Lifeline.
February 18, 2008... MCLEAN, VA -- With the private mortgage insurance industry facing a capital crunch, Freddie Mac has thrown these companies a lifeline that, if successful, will help to keep them from shutting down. This occurred as two of the four...

Residential Servicers at Dec. 31, 2007 (Sample).
February 18, 2008... Servicing Volume % Organization Name Location 12/31/07 12/31/06 Change America First CURiverdale, UT $1,115 $957 17% B.F. Saul Mtg./Chevy Chase BankBethesda, MD $21,184 $20,998 1% Bank Mutual Corp.Milwaukee,...

AIG Reassures Market on Credit Default Swap Exposure.
February 18, 2008... NEW YORK -- In a follow-up announcement, American International Group Inc. here said it does not expect losses on its credit default swap portfolio to be material. Originally the company filed a Form 8-K statement with the Securities and...