Category: News and Trends

Consumer credit default rates held steady in February, reported Experian, New York.

The Federal Housing Administration last week announced long-anticipated changes to its loan-level certification form.

The Mortgage Bankers Association, in a letter yesterday to FHA, expressed concerns about a $500 fee cap for processing assumptions for low-rate FHA mortgages and asked that the cap be adjusted to reflect actual costs lenders incur when processing an assumption.

Market volatility in the broader capital markets has increased the spreads investors demand for commercial mortgage-backed securities in recent months, leading many Wall Street analysts to reduce their expectations for 2016 CMBS issuance by 25 percent and more.

The House, by unanimous consent, approved yesterday a Mortgage Bankers Association-supported bill that would extend the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act through 2017.

CoreLogic, Irvine, Calif., reported 38,000 completed foreclosures in January, a 16 percent increase from December, but said the nation’s foreclosure inventory continued its steady drop.

First, the good news: Zillow Inc., Seattle, reported fewer homeowners underwater, with the national negative equity rate falling to 13.1 percent in the fourth quarter.

CoreLogic, Irvine, Calif., said one million borrowers regained equity in 2015, bringing the total number of mortgaged residential properties with equity at the end of the fourth quarter to 46.3 million, or 91.5 percent of all mortgaged properties.

LRES, Orange, Calif., issued a free white paper, What Mortgage Servicers Need to Know to Prevent Liens from Destroying Investor Profits.

As the House and Senate Budget Committees take up fiscal 2017 spending bills, the Mortgages Bankers Association and more than a dozen industry trade groups reiterated their opposition to use of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac guarantee fees to offset unrelated appropriations.