Finance

Mortgage application activity fell 2.7% in the week ending June 24, even as mortgage rates declined to their lowest level since the middle of November.

Bank of America Corp.'s proposed settlement of MBS claims against its Countrywide unit would force private-label investors in 530 Countrywide trusts to accept the bank's $8.5 billion offer, BofA officials said Wednesday.

The fundamentals for private mortgage insurers were supposed to have improved by now. They haven't.

Lawmakers sided with community banks on Tuesday in expressing concern that a pending risk retention rule and other new regulations will soon drive small institutions from the mortgage business.

The American Bankers Association (ABA) believes the role of the GSEs and FHA in the mortgage market should be gradually reduced so that 60% of home financing comes from the private sector with “no government aid.”

Housing prices rose 0.7% in April, snapping eight straight months of declines, as home values increased in 13 of the 20 cities in the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller house price index.

The New York State Court of Appeals reinstated a $5 billion fraudulent conveyance and breach of contract lawsuit brought by bank policyholders against MBIA.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) has appointed Noel Donohoe to the newly created position of executive managing director and group chief risk officer.

Angel Oak Capital Advisors has launched its Angel Oak Multi Strategy Income Fund to invest in ABS.

The June ABX remittance report showed that while loss severities and delinquency rates are improving, CDRs and modification rates saw a slight increase, as reported by Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts.

Moody’s Investors Service is asking for market feedback on a proposed follow-up to its operational risk guidelines concerning ABCP programs in a Request for Comment (RFC) issued yesterday.

Last month’s record-breaking U.S. used auto prices will help improve existing auto lease ABS, but will hurt future auto lease securitizations, according to a report by Moody’s Investors Service.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has posted newly revised prototypes of a two-page "Loan Estimate" disclosure on its Web site for a second round of input on the way closing costs are presented.

Small mortgage banking companies got hammered in the first quarter amid falling loan volumes and rising expenses.

A group of mortgage originators, issuers and investors is close to a consensus on a new process for enforcing representations and warranties on private-label securities.

On a day when the stock market soared upwards, the three stand-alone mortgage insurers all saw their stock price drop. This is in apparent reaction to an article that appeared over the weekend in another publication.

Fraudsters that previously focused on breaking into new accounts are now putting more attention on cracking the security barriers of older card accounts, causing the incidence of such crimes to rise, according to Experian PLC.

The call for loan-level mortgage data sounded soon after the industry began to pick up the pieces from the housing market crash. It's grown louder since then and the information is slowly becoming more available. But without a way to identify and decipher what it means, the data are worthless. Luckily, there is new technology coming to market that provides lenders, investors and servicers the ability to monitor the loans being originated, evaluate their quality and monitor repayment performance.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, some mortgage lenders are choosing to relax underwriting requirements ever so slightly to offset a dramatic drop in loan origination volumes.

GTP Acquisition Partners is offering the Class C and Class F notes of Secured Tower Revenue Notes, Series 2011-2. Moody’s Investors Service has assigned provisional ratings of 'A2 (sf)' to the $490 million Class C notes and 'Ba3 (sf)' to the $155 million Class F notes. The offering is backed by wireless towers.