FHFA delays nettlesome pricing change for mortgages

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has pushed back the implementation date of some of the adjusted fees set to apply to mortgages purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on May 1. Specifically, higher fees charged for mortgages with debt-to-income ratios above 40% will instead become effective Aug. 1, with no post-purchase adjustments applied through Dec. 31, 2023. Mortgage bankers have shown particular concern about the DTI-based fees because the variable is one that's particularly likely to change during the origination process.

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LoanDepot says cash, warehouse line with Signature Bank are safe

The lender and servicer transferred $225 million of corporate cash balances out of the former bank Monday to an unnamed large money center bank, it said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday. It moved the funds following the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s establishment Sunday evening of a bridge bank, Signature Bridge Bank N.A., which protected depositors and will continue the bank's operations. The bank's collapse won't impact loanDepot's $300 million warehouse facility, in which Signature is a 50% participant, and a $300 million servicing rights facility with Signature, which both expire this December. 

Ginnie Mae plans to staff up to handle RMF portfolio

Ginnie Mae is looking to significantly grow its team to help manage the "sizable and complex portfolio" of Reverse Mortgage Funding, which it seized in late-December. But to do so, the government guarantor needs more funding. The agency is requesting a $61 million budget for salaries and expenses next year, an increase of $20.6 million from this year's levels, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development's appropriation request for 2024. Ginnie, a corporation within HUD, plans to use some of the funds to hire an additional 70 employees, beefing up the agency's headcount to 271. 

Mortgage volumes increase for second week

Mortgage application volumes increased for a second straight week, as concerns regarding the stability of financial institutions drove interest rates down, helping boost borrower demand, the Mortgage Bankers Association said. The MBA's Market Composite Index, a measure of weekly loan activity based on surveys of association members, increased a seasonally adjusted 6.5% for the seven-day period ending March 10. While up for the second consecutive survey period, volumes remained 56.8% below their levels of a year ago. Both purchases and refinances came in higher week over week. The Refinance Index climbed up 4.8% but still landed 74.1% lower on an annual basis. At the same time, the share of refinances relative to total application volume slid to 28.2% from 28.9% seven days earlier in spite of the increase in volume. 

Higher mortgage rates spur record number of concessions

Rising mortgage rates and high home prices forced a record number of sellers to make concessions in the three-month period ended Feb. 28, Redfin said. In 45.5% of transactions conducted by Redfin's buyer agents the seller offered some form of remuneration back to the purchaser, the most in any three-month period since the real estate brokerage began tracking this data in June 2020. For the same period last year, 31.1% of sales involved some sort of action by the seller to get the deal done, other than a price cut. That includes covering the transaction's closing costs, funding a mortgage rate buydown for the purchaser and/or paying for repairs. 

Finance of America reports first earnings after massive pivot

Finance of America ended 2022 far smaller than what it was just months earlier, but leaders said plenty of work still remained to shore up its balance sheet following its latest quarterly loss. The Plano, Texas-based mortgage company posted a net loss of $182 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, a period that saw Finance of America pivot toward becoming a "retirement-focused home equity provider." The company trimmed its deficit from $301.7 million three months earlier and $1.34 billion over the same period in 2021. In a year that opened with a massive internal restructuring, Finance of America's net loss came in at $715.5 million compared to a negative profit of $1.18 billion 12 months prior. 

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