The Lede

The outlook improved slightly for properties that support most commercial mortgage-backed securities, reported Moody's Investors Service, New York.

The Mortgage Bankers Association's grassroots advocacy arm, the Mortgage Action Alliance, issued a Call to Action yesterday, urging its members to contact their representatives in Congress in support of a bill that would require the Federal Housing Finance Agency to withdraw a controversial proposed rule on Federal Home Loan Bank System membership. 

Offices of the Mortgage Bankers Association will be closed this Wednesday, Nov. 11, in observance of the Veterans Day holiday. 

RealtyTrac, Irvine, Calif., reported homeowners who sold during the third quarter saw and average price gain of $40,658, or 17 percent, from their purchase price, the highest gain since 2007.  

MBA Education, the education arm of the Mortgage Bankers Association, presents the second of a two-part webinar series, Understanding the Mystery of Secondary Marketing, on Nov. 18.

The Mortgage Bankers Association's Accounting and Financial Management Conference takes place Nov. 18-20 at The Roosevelt in New Orleans.

National Mortgage Professional, Nov. 9, 2015--Hall, Phil North Dakota has received much attention lately for its booming energy industry. But a new survey from the NerdWallet Web site gives North Dakota new attention as the state with the best mortgage health.

Winston-Salem Journal (N.C.), Nov. 5, 2015--Craver, Richard Wells Fargo & Co. will have to pay $81.6 million in remediation costs for its "repeated failure" to provide homeowners with legally required notices, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Wall Street Journal, Nov. 5, 2015--Dulaney, Chelsey Fannie Mae said profit was halved in the third quarter, as declines in long-term interest rates hurt the value of the mortgage-finance company's derivatives.

HousingWire, Nov. 5, 2015 Fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to guarantee loans will likely not go to pay for new roads, after the House voted overwhelmingly to remove a controversial portion of a massive transportation bill that would have used g-fees to offset the cost of the bill. The Mortgage Bankers Association praised the House action.

New York Times, Nov. 7, 2015--Saul, Stephanie White-collar criminals are employing a variety of schemes to snatch properties from their owners. Often, they use the secrecy afforded to shell companies to rent out vacated properties until they are caught or sell them to third parties.

HousingWire, Nov. 6, 2015--Lane, Ben For the first time since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac first established a benchmark interest rate for the standard mortgage modification programs in Jan. 2012, the rate is about to be lower than 4%.

National Mortgage News, Nov. 6, 2015--Collins, Brian While the overwhelming majority of Nationstar Mortgage Holding's $4.9 billion in home loan originations in the third quarter were conventional loans, that will be changing soon if the company's chief executive officer has his way.

Wall Street Journal, Nov. 9, 2015--Dendrinou, Victoria Global financial regulators published new rules that aim to stop banks from becoming "too big to fail," to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, when taxpayers had to bail out banks whose collapse would have threatened large-scale financial panic.

National Mortgage News, Nov. 9, 2015--Finkelstein, Brad Amid an ongoing shift in pricing strategies in the private mortgage insurance market, Essent Group chairman and CEO Mark Casale is trying to show investors that aggressive pricing tactics aren't the only way PMI firms compete.

Atlanta Business Chronicle, Nov. 4, 2015 Data from the latest Equifax National Consumer Credit Trends Report show total mortgage originations rose to $1.2 trillion through the first nine months of 2015--up 63 percent over the same period a year ago. But at the same time, total mortgage and home equity balances were $8.84 trillion at the end of September--virtually flat with figures from the past 18 months.

WFAA-TV (Dallas), Nov. 9, 2015--Shipp, Brett Texas got a financial windfall from the National Mortgage Settlement. None has been spent to help struggling homeowners, however.

HousingWire, Nov. 9, 2015--Swanson, Brena Primary new mortgage insurance once again dropped for the month and declined to $3.5 billion, according to MGIC Investment's October operational summery of its insurance subsidiaries for its primary mortgage insurance.

Austin American-Statesman, Nov. 3, 2015--Osborn, Claire Owners of 400 homes in a Williamson County, Texas neighborhood got a shock recently after receiving a federal lawsuit that said the land they had bought as far back as the 1990s really wasn't theirs.

HousingWire, Nov. 3, 2015--Swanson, Brena A quick perusal of the new supervisory report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau might finally be a sign that servicers are no longer at the top of the bureau's hit list.

Marketwatch, Nov. 3, 2015--Goldstein, Steve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are at risk of needing an injection of Treasury capital after the latter reported its first quarterly loss in four years, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency said Tuesday.

Bloomberg, Nov. 3, 2015--Hopkins, Cheyenne Freddie Mac won't seek additional funds from the Treasury Department and won't need to make a dividend payment to the government after reporting a half-billion dollar third-quarter loss stemming mostly from accounting for hedges against interest-rate risk.

HousingWire, Nov. 4, 2015--Swanson, Brena Distressed sales and short sales accounted for 9.3% of total home sales nationally in August, down 2.3 percentage points from a year ago and down 0.4 percentage points from July, said CoreLogic.