RMBS

The banking consent agreements signed by some of the nation's largest residential servicers on Wednesday require the firms to stop the practice of "dual tracking" where at risk homeowners start the loan modification process but also are officially put into a parallel foreclosure pipeline.

MountainView Capital Holdings, Denver, hired Robert Wellerstein as a managing director in the firm's mortgage and fixed-income sales and trading units.

An enforcement action against a bank is almost always bad news for the institution involved.

A mortgage that is more than 60 days late might seem like an automatic disqualification for inclusion into a government-backed security. However, until last week, servicers were able to pool such loans into securities backed by the Ginnie Mae.

Sales of distressed properties could pull home prices down by another 10%, according to CoreLogic chief economist Mark Fleming.

The European Central Bank (ECB) raised interest rates for the first time in almost three years last week. It is a widely anticipated quarter-point rate increase to 1.25% and is likely to be followed by consecutive increases this year.

Mortgage originations at JPMorgan Chase (JPM) dropped 29% since the end of 2010, kicking off a year where industrywide originations are projected to drop below $1 trillion.

Federal banking regulators Wednesday afternoon dropped their regulatory "bomb" on the nation's largest residential servicers — and two of their top outside vendors — accusing the firms of a "pattern of negligence and misconduct" tied to the processing of loans.

Mortgage application activity declined 6.7% for the week ending April 8 as mortgage rates inched higher.

The investment banking firm Sandler O’Neill & Partners added a team of five sales professionals to its Chicago-based, fixed-income group.