W.J. Bradley Company Merchant Partners, LLC, an acquisition firm focused on consolidating small and medium sized mortgage brokers and banks, announced today that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire SB Financial, Inc., a Los Angeles-based mortgage broker. The SB Financial acquisition is the 10th mortgage company acquisition that W.J. Bradley has made in [...]

Mortgage applications continued to edge downward last week, the latest sign of borrower hesitance in the face of a declining housing market, according to numbers released Wednesday by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 671, a decrease of 0.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from [...]

A new report shows that foreclosure filings in Massachusetts continue to escalate at a record-setting pace, reaching a new high in February. According to ForeclosuresMass.com, 2,227 foreclosures were initiated statewide during February 2007, 85 percent more than the number recorded in February 2006. Over the past 12 months, lenders initiated foreclosure proceedings against 21,644 homeowners, [...]

According to a report issued recently by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency said it expects losses residential mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006 will fall between 5.25 percent and 7.75 percent, the worst performance for a subprime RMBS vintage since 2000. The S&P report also noted that while most ‘BBB’ and ‘BBB-’ rated classes are protected [...]

TheStreet.com’s Mark DeCambre reports that France’s fourth-largest bank, Natixis, will auction off nearly $800 million in New Century-originated loans as the troubled lender appears headed for a certain BK filing.

January data released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices in the United States, shows home price composites plummeting into negative terrain. S&P said that annual returns of the composite indices shows the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite down 0.7 percent and down 0.2 [...]

In testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives today, MBA chairman John M. Robbins offered a surprisingly strong and personal take on the recent troubles in the subprime market, going so far as to admit that the lending industry made a mistake in underwriting thousands of subprime mortgages during the recent housing boom. The MBA [...]

Fitch Ratings said late yesterday that it has downgraded AMC Mortgage Services, Inc.’s servicer ratings in light of operating difficulties at the subprime giant and growing concern over Citi’s willingness to provide continued liquidity to the organization. The rating agency also said AMC was placed on Rating Watch Negative for possible additional downgrades. Fitch also said [...]

Mortgage professionals and consumers should take a look at more traditional financing tools in today’s turbulent housing market, according to Dr. Susan M. Wachter, Professor of Real Estate and Finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Dr. Wachter made her comments in the U.S. Mortgage Index, a new quarterly report launched today to examine key [...]

While the mortgage market continues to roil from the effects of a meltdown in subprime credit, IBM (NYSE: IBM) said today it intends to enter the loan fulfillment business and that it has formed a new business unit which will specialize in providing software and services for mortgage lenders. IBM Lender Business Process Services, Inc., [...]