RMBS

Twenty-four hours after Bank of America told Fannie Mae to take a hike on secondary market purchases, the realization is starting to sink in that one party — the GSE — may stand to lose a lot more than the seller/servicer.

Ocwen Financial Corp., a major buyer of MSRs the past two years, earned $9.7 million in the fourth quarter, a slight decline from the same period a year earlier.

The acting commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) this week blasted news that claim Bank of America Corp. was essentially bailing out the agency's mortgage insurance fund.

Non-agency RMBS outstanding is expected to decrease to less than $1.1 trillion when the Federal Reserve reports fourth quarter 2011 data in March, according to an emailed note from Standard & Poor's this morning.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) wants to see if the multifamily businesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can be spun off and privatized.

Bank of America Thursday afternoon confirmed that it will no longer sell any new purchase money mortgages to Fannie Mae — though it will remain a Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) lender.

Banks unloading real-estate-owned properties face some tough choices, such as whether to auction off homes or sell them to investors, and whether to fix them up first. But whatever they decide, the real challenge is to avoid dragging down property values from their already-depressed 25% to 30% discounts.

Nationstar Mortgage, Lewisville, Texas, is in the hunt for Aurora Loan Services (ALS) and appears to be the leading bidder at this point, according to investment banking advisors close to the situation.

Fixed mortgage rates moved higher in the week ending Feb. 23 in response to the recent sell-off related to favorable economic news and progress on Greece.