National Mortgage News articles from March 2003

National Mortgage News archives from March 2003

2002 Subprime Volume a Record $241B.
March 3, 2003... Subprime lenders funded a record $241 billion of home mortgages in 2002, according to figures compiled by this newspaper. The stunning production results came amid historical lows in mortgage rates, but also an increasing consumer and...

OCC May Pre-Empt Georgia Law.
March 3, 2003... National banks may be in line for relief from the Georgia state predatory lending law now that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is considering a request by the National City Bank, Cleveland, for a federal pre- emption. ...

MSR Runoff Concerning Regulators.
March 3, 2003... Concerns about the incredible runoff of residential servicing rights have finally prompted federal banking regulators to step up their examinations of large depository-owned mortgage banking shops. Bank examiners want to make sure banks...

MBA: 25% Floor Now for Refis?
March 3, 2003... Refinancing is likely to account for about 25% of loan origination activity even after interest rates start rising, according to Douglas Duncan, the Mortgage Bankers Association of America's chief economist. (Related coverage, p. 30.)...

Longtime MBA Head, 62, Dies.
March 3, 2003... Warren Lasko, who made his mark in the housing finance industry as a federal administrator and trade group executive, died of cancer on Feb. 20. He was 62. Mr. Lasko is probably best known for his tenure as executive director of the...

NYC Mayor Thwarts B-C Bill.
March 3, 2003... New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has obtained a temporary restraining order preventing the city's predatory lending ordinance from taking effect as scheduled on Feb. 24. The restraining order was obtained as part of a lawsuit filed...

Freddie Mac Mortgage Holdings-Purchases.
March 3, 2003... (January Purchases Way Down) ($ in Mils) (part 1 of 2) Year/ Total Retained PCs Held Port. Grwth Month Portfolio in Port Rate (1) 1-Oct $477,588 ...

Subprime Residential Lending Volume Leaders.
March 3, 2003... ($ in Millions) (part 1 of 2) Rk Organization Name Location 1 CitiFinancial Baltimore, MD 2 Household Fin'l Svcs(E)(1) Prospect Hts, IL 3 Washington Mutual Seattle, WA 4 New Century Fin'l...

New Home Sales Plunge 15%.
March 3, 2003... New home sales plunged 15.1% in January as economic problems, a possible war with Iraq and falling consumer confidence caught up with a red-hot national housing market. However, sales of existing homes jumped 3.04% in January, setting a...

Radian Bidding On GE's FGIC?
March 3, 2003... Radian Group Inc., Philadelphia, a major player in mortgage insurance, is one of a handful of bidders interested in Financial Guaranty Insurance Co., a bond insurer owned by General Electric. FGIC is also an insurer of asset-backed deals,...

Freddie Mac Purchases Slump in January, Dropping by 40%.
March 3, 2003... Loan purchases by Freddie Mac plunged by almost 40% in January from the previous month, according to figures released by the company. During the month, Freddie bought $55 billion in mortgages compared to $91.2 billion in January. ...

3 FHLBs Purchase $17.2B Through MPP.
March 3, 2003... The three Federal Home Loan Banks participating in the Mortgage Purchase Program acquired $17.2 billion on single-family loans from member banks and thrifts in 2002. "We believe our first full year of operation has demonstrated that the...

Editorial: After the Phone Stops Ringing.
March 3, 2003... Last week, we talked about what servicers need to do to set themselves up for when rates rise and the phone stops ringing ow, what about originators? It's easy to be an originator during a refinancing boom. About the only limitation to...

Open Forum: Little Evidence of 'Bubble'.
March 3, 2003... Governor Bernanke recently addressed the 41st Annual Winter Institute at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minn xcerpts of his remarks are presented as our Open Forum. Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of gross...

Economic Concerns Bring Mortgage Rates Down Yet Another Notch: Street SMARTS.
March 3, 2003... Prognosticators keep saying interest rates must eventually reverse direction, but last week they headed downward once again to a new level. For weeks, the rate-indicative benchmark 10-year Treasury yield has been more or less in the...

Downgrades for 11 Conseco Classes.
March 3, 2003... The ratings on 11 classes from various Conseco Finance Corp.-related securitizations have been downgraded from CCC-minus to D (default) by Standard & Poor's Ratings Services. The downgrades were as follows: Home Improvement Loan Trust,...

RFC Hits Record with 2002 ABS.
March 3, 2003... Residential Funding Corp. has reported that its total mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities issuance in 2002 reached $34.5 billion, the highest in company history and a 30.7% increase over 2001. Record-breaking volumes were issued...

SASCO Securities Get Fitch Downgrade.
March 3, 2003... Seven classes of Structured Asset Securities Corp. mortgage pass-through certificates have been downgraded by Fitch Ratings. The downgrades were as follows: SASCO 1996-4, class B3, from BBB to BB, and class B4, from CCC to D; SASCO...

Fitch Says It Has Enhanced Servicer Ratings.
March 3, 2003... Fitch Ratings has released a report detailing its new criteria for rating residential mortgage servicers. The report offers an overview of Fitch's approach to the residential servicer rating process and its application to Fitch's...

Seller-Servicer Risk Outweighs Trustee.
March 3, 2003... According to a study by Fitch Ratings, "thinly capitalized" seller-servicers and unique asset classes add risk to the performance of asset-backed securities. While in some recent ABS failures, trustees have come under fire for their...

At a Glance.
March 3, 2003... (A New Fitch Report Refines Servicing) Evaluation Criteria In Following Areas Residential MBS Transaction Analysis Controls for Predatory Lending Claims Processing and Collections Technology-Collection Tools ...

Impac Offering Raises $33 Million.
March 3, 2003... Impac Mortgage Holdings has priced an offering of three million shares of its common stock at a price per share of $11.60 to raise an aggregate of $33 million for the firm. Impac said proceeds from the offering will be used "for general...

Wilshire's Earnings Fall on 'Non-Recurring' Items.
March 3, 2003... Wilshire Financial Services Group reported net income after taxes of $2 million, or 11 cents per share, in 2002. That's down from $5.6 million, or 28 cents per share, the year before, but Wilshire blamed the decline on nonrecurring items...

Thornburg Offering Raises $64 Million.
March 3, 2003... Thornburg Mortgage has priced a follow-on offering of 3.2 million shares of common stock at $20. Gross proceeds from the transaction were $64 million and will be used primarily to fund loans originated by the company and to purchase...

Portfolio Growth 'Bodes Well' for Redwood.
March 3, 2003... Analysts at Sandler O'Neill give Redwood Trust, a mortgage REIT based in Mill Valley, Calif., a "buy" rating with a $31 12-month price target, citing the company's ongoing portfolio growth as an indication that it will continue to grow...

NCFC Finishes 2nd Stock Repurchase.
March 3, 2003... New Century Financial Corp. has repurchased its second million-share allocation under the company's stock repurchase program using corporate liquidity. In December, the company's board of directors approved a third million-share...

PMI Authorizes Stock Repurchase.
March 3, 2003... The PMI Group said its board of directors has authorized the repurchase of up to $100 million of the company's outstanding common stock. Under the new program, management is authorized to repurchase shares from time to time in open...

Consumers Confused by Loan Process.
March 3, 2003... A survey conducted by LandAmerica Financial Group Inc. here found that in spite of a record number of home purchase loans in 2002, most consumers say they are perplexed by the mortgage originations procedure. Approximately 86% of the...

REIT Restates Earnings Down.
March 3, 2003... National Health Investors Inc. here, a real estate investment trust that finances health care properties, has restated its earnings downward because of its investment in another REIT, LTC Properties Inc., Oxnard, Calif. NHI has taken a...

Wells, Builder in Partnership.
March 3, 2003... Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc. here and Paramount Construction Inc., Rockville, Md., have formed a strategic relationship that allows the latter company to offer its customers home financing products and services through the former. ...

Top Mortgage Lenders.
March 3, 2003... (In the Tampa-St. Petersburg MSA) (Dollars in Thousands) (part 1 of 2) Organization Name Location 1 Bank of America, N.A. Saint Louis, MO 2 Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Des...

eMortgage: Note Validity Secure?
March 3, 2003... The mortgage industry is getting closer to the all-electronic mortgage every day. Recently, a number of document preparation companies, perhaps most notably DocuTech, have announced eMortgage compatible systems that can produce all-...

The Magic Kingdom.
March 3, 2003... It's not stretching it too much to see similarities between the mortgage technology field, which is meeting in Orlando next week for the Mortgage Bankers Association of America's annual tech show, and Disney's Magic Kingdom, which will...

MERS to Mingle at Upcoming MBA Technology Show.
March 3, 2003... You won't see a MERS booth on the exhibit hall floor at this year's Mortgage Bankers of America technology show, but you will see some of their executives. The company says it will be on hand for the show and is looking forward to talking to...

A Breakthrough Way to Process Defaulted Loans.
March 3, 2003... When he arrives in Orlando as a speaker on workflow for the National Technology in Mortgage Banking Conference, this will be only the second time Don Pettingill has attended MBA Tech. Yet Mr. Pettingill, president of AP3 Solutions LLC, is...

DOCX at MBA Technology Show to Look for New Partners.
March 3, 2003... DOCX will celebrate its 10th anniversary at the Mortgage Bankers Association's Mortgage Technology Conference in Orlando with announcement of a new suite of Web-based applications for creating and recording lien releases and assignments. ...

Plenty to See and Do in Orlando - Try SeaWorld, MGM, Universal.
March 3, 2003... While the Disney Co. may have the term Magic Kingdom trademarked, the magic doesn't end at its Orlando theme park gates. In fact, Walt Disney World and its associated environs are just the beginning. For the mortgage industry conventioneer...

J2 in Orlando to Promote Fax Security Offerings.
March 3, 2003... J2 Global Communications Inc. here, as its name suggests, has an extensive global reach that extends from its headquarters in the United States to Mexico, South America, Western Europe, Asia and Australia. But, in contrast to the breadth...

TCN to Promote Back-Office Infrastructure at Convention.
March 3, 2003... The thing Richard Downing, president of The Credit Network, Framingham, Mass., likes about the Mortgage Bankers of America's annual mortgage technology show and conference is that he's never sure who he'll see there. "The thing we like...

New QuadMerge Product Hits Streets from FNIS.
March 3, 2003... While originally launched last October at the MBA's national convention, Fidelity National Information Solution's QuadMerge product has a new twist. The company will be promoting the product, among other products and services for the...

Alltel Unveils Value Tracker at Show.
March 3, 2003... While mortgage servicing industry giant Alltel may well be a subsidiary of Fidelity National now, that won't stop the company from showing up at the Mortgage Bankers Association of America's annual technology show and conference in Orlando...

RESPA Gets Meeting Attention.
March 3, 2003... ABN Amro senior vice president and conference panelist Garth Graham believes proposed U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reform of the Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act is likely to be a key topic at the Mortgage...

Web Services Panel to Shed Light on Subject at Tech.
March 3, 2003... While most everyone in the mortgage business has heard of Web services - even those not directly involved in the technology side of the business - at least one expert says most people still don't get it. James Owens, business development...

Freddie Mac, NRC-Atlanta Continue Affordable Housing Effort.
March 3, 2003... Aiming to further expand the success of a 10-year affordable housing partnership with Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp. of Atlanta, Freddie Mac announced a new $2 million five-year grant, part of which will be used by the NRC Training...

FHA Gets Good Report from Auditors.
March 3, 2003... The performance of the Federal Housing Administration single-family insurance fund improved in fiscal year 2002 and the capital ratio of the fund jumped to 4.52% from 3.75% in FY 2001. The FY 2002 actuarial report by Deloitte & Touche also...

Fannie Mae Won't Get Conseco Servicing Platform.
March 3, 2003... Fannie Mae came up short on its $70 million bid to purchase the servicing platform of Conseco Finance, St. Paul, Minn., but that's more than OK with the secondary market giant. Fannie Mae officials said the company's goal was to make...

Another Trade Group For Mortgage Lenders?
March 3, 2003... It appears as though the mortgage industry will be getting another trade group, one that will serve the lobbying interests of mega-servicers and producers like Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo and Chase Manhattan Mortgage. The Financial...

People.
March 3, 2003... CALIFORNIA El Cajon-Cal-Western Reconveyance Corp. has welcomed Suzanne Eaton to the CWRC team as the assistant vice president of marketing. Ms aton will oversee business and client relationships with Cal-Western's East Coast and Midwest...

New York AG Ready to Take On OCC.
March 3, 2003... New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer has signaled that he is prepared to fight the supervisor of national banks in order to enforce the laws against predatory lending. Speaking before the Consumer Federation of America, the New...

Mortgage Industry Equity Composite.
March 3, 2003... MIEC Index: 136.7; Change: 0.0 (part 1 of 2) 2/20/03 2/27/03 Wkly % Chg 52 wk/lo Alltel (AT) 42.57 43.08 1% 35.33 Countrywide Financial Corp....

Publicly Traded 'Subprime' Related Firms.
March 3, 2003... B&C Stock Price Index: 135.0; Change: -0.7 (part 1 of 2) Company 52 wk/lo 52 wk/hi 2/27/03 Aames (AMSF) 0.34 1.9 1.25 American Business Fin. (ABFI) 6.36...

Hanover Capital Increases Dividend.
March 3, 2003... Hanover Capital Mortgage Holdings reported net income of $5.1 million for last year, or $1.16 per share, a 57% increase from 2001. The company increased its dividend by $0.15 per share as a result. As previously announced in December,...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
March 3, 2003... A headline that ran in the Feb. 24 National Mortgage News should have read "Will Fannie Mae's Customization Effort Have 'PaymentPower'?" The last word was misstated. We regret the error. Copyright 2003 Thomson Media Inc. All Rights...

Top Mortgage Lenders.
March 3, 2003... (In the Orlando, FL, USA) (Dollars in Thousands) (part 1 of 2) Rank Organization Name Location 1 Chase Manhattan Mortgage Edison, NJ 2 Countrywide Home Loans Rosemead, CA ...

Servicers Leaving Sale Opportunities.
March 3, 2003... Top officials with the Mortgage Bankers Association of America believe that lenders can improve cross-sales and customer retention by placing a higher emphasis on service quality. Speaking at the MBA's servicing conference here, Martin...

Ocwen Launches New Default Tech.
March 3, 2003... Ocwen Technology Exchange Inc. a subsidiary of Ocwen Financial Corp., chose the MBA servicing conference here to announce the release of the industry's "first truly integrated default management system," which it calls REALResolution. ...

Countrywide Reassures Investors.
March 3, 2003... Countrywide Financial Corp. chairman, chief executive and president Angelo Mozilo told investors on Feb. 25 that the company has met with regulators and is confident that it is using a conservative approach in valuing its mortgage servicing...

Cincinnati FHLB Supports Stock Registration.
March 3, 2003... The Cincinnati Federal Home Loan Bank has decided that the time has come to signal its support for the registration of FHLBank stock with the Securities and Exchange Commission, even though the stock is not publicly traded and it does not...

Inside Track.
March 10, 2003... OPEN FORUM Supporting Tribal Sovereignty 4 EQUITIES American Financial Plans $600M Public Offering 10 TECHNOLOGY RealEC Technologies Reaches Record Transaction Volumes 21 SERVICING WaMu Aims for the...

GMAC Commercial for Sale; WaMu, Others Interested.
March 10, 2003... GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., the No. 1 commercial lender and servicer in the nation, is on the auction block, and sources say Washington Mutual and others are lining up to bid. As National Mortgage News went to press late last week, a...

Cendant 'Impairment' $263M.
March 10, 2003... Cendant Mortgage here, the nation's ninth largest residential servicer, took a $263 million servicing "impairment" charge in 2002. A year earlier, the company took a $155 million charge, bringing its two- year impairment total to $419...

$700B of Equity Tapped.
March 10, 2003... Homeowners extracted $700 billion in equity from their homes last year, according to the Federal Reserve Board. Fed economists estimate consumers tapped $200 billion in equity through "cash-out" refinancings, $130 billion through home...

HUD Moving Packaging Plan Alone?
March 10, 2003... Though no one at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is talking, congressional sources have confirmed secretary Mel Martinez is considering moving ahead on only the guaranteed mortgage package portion of his plan to revise the...

WTC Plans Regain All CRE.
March 10, 2003... The design that has been chosen to rebuild the World Trade Center site will replace almost all of the commercial real estate space that was lost on 9-11. The New York City commercial real estate community, however, is adopting a "wait...

At a Glance.
March 10, 2003... (GMAC's Commercial Mortgage Empire) ($ in millions) Commercial Serv. Port.: $160,894 Commercial Serv. Rank: first Commercial Prod. in Q4: $6,826 Commercial Prod. Rank: first Favorite Property...

Top Residential Lenders & Their Los Systems.
March 10, 2003... ($ in Mills) (part 1 of 2) Rk Organization Name Location 1 Wells Fargo Hm Mtg Des Moines, IA 2 Washington Mutual Seattle, WA 3 Countrywide Fin'l Calabasas, CA 4 Chase Home Fin. Edison, NJ ...

Investment Group, GE Consumer Finance Will Buy Conseco's Assets.
March 10, 2003... After a marathon session, the winning bidder for the majority of Conseco Finance Corp.'s assets was CFN Investment Holdings LLC. It agreed to pay at least $700 million for the subprime and manufactured housing lender formerly known as Green...

PMI Will Allow Financing of Fee.
March 10, 2003... The PMI Group is rolling out a new rate structure for mortgage insurance that allows homebuyers to finance or pay part of the premium upfront to lower their monthly payments. This new split premium rate structure reduces the monthly MI...

Two Industry Subprime Veterans Jumping Back into the Fire.
March 10, 2003... Two well-respected industry veterans, who sold their companies at what they thought was the top of the market and then headed to the golf course, have decided they want back in. Bill Starkey Sr., who built AccuBanc Mortgage, Houston, into...

FNC Users Get Access to SMI.
March 10, 2003... FNC has formed an alliance with Stewart Mortgage Information to provide lenders using FNC's Collateral Management System integrated access to a variety of SMI services, including flood zone determinations, appraisal, and AVMs, as well as to...

Editorial: National Standards?
March 10, 2003... Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have both now signed off on the concept of "national standards" that should be followed by everyone to banish predatory lending once and for all. In general, we think this is a fine idea and Rep. Bob Ney's bill...

Open Forum: Supporting Tribal Sovereignty.
March 10, 2003... Secretary Martinez recently addressed the National Congress of American Indians at the 2003 Executive Council Winter Session in Washington xcerpts of his remarks are presented as our Open Forum. As part of the FY 2004 budget request,...

Mortgage Market's Mantra Should Be 'Rates, Rates, Rates': Street SMARTS.
March 10, 2003... After examining conditions in the market in recent weeks, I've become more convinced than ever that the mantra "interest rates, interest rates, interest rates" is central to the mortgage industry the way "location, location, location" is the...

HUD Says It Will Offer Legislation to Create FHA Subprime Program.
March 10, 2003... The Department of Housing and Urban Development will be seeking congressional approval later this year to start a new Federal Housing Administration loan product designed specifically for subprime borrowers. HUD secretary Mel Martinez told...

GAO Report Foresees More FHFB Infighting.
March 10, 2003... The Federal Housing Finance Board will continue to be plagued by "bitter conflicts" unless a 1993 delegation of authority that gives the Finance Board's chairman autocratic powers is modified, according to a General Accounting Office report....

Executive Sees Inequities for Minorities.
March 10, 2003... When Patrick Stone was asked to moderate a panel on minority lending at the Midwinter Housing Conference here earlier this month, he admits he knew next to nothing about the topic. After all, as chief executive officer of Fidelity National...

Residential Loans Boom at AZ Bank.
March 10, 2003... Many lenders anticipate that 2003 will be a fine year, but nowhere as good as the one that just ended. Then there's First National Bank of Arizona here, a growing force in niche lending. The bank and its affiliate, First National...

Analyst: REIT Dividend Yields 'Attractive'.
March 10, 2003... A tax change made in 1998 may work to the long-term benefit of investors in real estate investment trusts, according to a report from A.G dwards. As a result of tax law changes made in 1998, short-term capital gains on stocks held for...

American Financial Realty Trust Plans $600 Million Public Offering.
March 10, 2003... American Financial Realty Trust, a real estate investment trust launched by Lewis S. Ranieri last year, is planning an initial public offering of its common shares for an estimated total amount of $600 million. In connection with this,...

Analyst Lowers Rating For Staten Island Bank.
March 10, 2003... Analysts at Sandler O'Neill have reduced their rating on the stock of Staten Island Bancorp to "maintain," but they say an SEC "informal inquiry" into the bank's restatement of financials for 2001 and 2002 does not affect its earnings...

MBA Sees Light at End of Predatory Tunnel.
March 10, 2003... The predatory lending pendulum is starting to swing back towards a single national law that deals with abusive lending practices, the chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association believes. "All of a sudden, the debate has changed," John...

Latino Market Spreading Out.
March 10, 2003... Lenders who don't know by now that the Hispanic population is the fastest growing in the nation and a major source of new business over the next few decades could easily be accused of having their heads stuck in the sand. But what many...

The Homeownership Gap.
March 10, 2003... (The Emerging Markets Opportunity) White Hispanic African-American Asian Population Growth 5% 41% 21% 40% Homeownership Rate 2000 74.5% 48.2% 47.3% ...

'Underserved' Is Not Exclusively a Minority Market.
March 10, 2003... The so-called emerging market homebuyer cannot be characterized solely as a low-income member of a minority. According to Fannie Mae, the large group of borrowers who have been overlooked, undeserved or overcharged by the housing finance...