The Mortgage Insurance Companies of America (MICA) reported today that mortgage defaults among borrowers with mortgage insurance jumped 30 percent relative to year-ago levels, with 58,441 primary insurance defaults recorded during August. The reported cure rate — that is, the number of defaults that were able to reperform — rose 11 percent in August relative [...]

In what regulators were quick to portray as an “isolated” incident, Alpharetta, Ga.-based thrift NetBank Inc. was closed by the OTS today. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named as the receiver for the bank’s $2.5 billion in assets. The Net Bank failure is the largest since 1993, and is the first bank failure tied to [...]

Freddie Mac said late yesterday that it has agreed to a $50 million civil penalty to settle SEC charges of securities fraud in connection with improper earnings management at the GSE beginning as early as 1998 and lasting into 2002. As part of the settlement agreement, Freddie Mac neither admitted nor denied any wrongdoing. The SEC’s [...]

If you read the media, you’ve undoubtedly heard about all of those bad, bad subprime loans made in 2005 and 2006. And if you believe everything that you read in the financial press and from the mouths of any loan originators still doing business in subprime, you also might think that nobody is making subprime [...]

In the lastest evidence yet of the extent of the housing slowdown, new home sales during August registered 21.2 percent below the pace set just one year ago, the Commerce Depermant estimated Thursday. New home sales were estimated at a seasonally-adjusted rate of 795,000, off 8.3 percent from July’s estimated sales pace — the slowest [...]

Proving true numerous analysts who noted that the Fed’s decision last week to cut the federal funds target rate would be unlikely to drive mortgage rates lower, Freddie Mac’s weekly rate survey found that rates on 30-year fixed mortgages rose for the second straight week. 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.42 percent this week,the GSE reported, up [...]

Moody’s Investors Service said today that it has downgraded all servicer quality ratings for Homecomings Financial, amid a debt downgrade of the servicer’s parent, Residential Capital, LLC. The ratings actions included a drop in prime, HLTV, and second lien servicing to “SQ2+” from “SQ1″ — a two notch drop in rating — as well as [...]

Moody’s Investors Service said today that it has downgraded the servicer quality rating of EMC Mortgage Corporation as a primary servicer of subprime residential mortgage loans to “SQ1-” from “SQ1.” Moody’s also affirmed EMC’s prime servicer rating of “SQ2,” a rating of “SQ2″ as a primary servicer of second lien residential mortgage loans and “SQ2+” [...]

An analyst at Goldman Sachs cut his full-year earnings estimate for Merrill Lynch by 25 percent on the expectation that the third-largest Wall Street investment bank may record up to $4 billion in mortgage and related losses. From Bloomberg: [Goldman Sachs analyst William] Tanona cut his third-quarter earnings estimate to 15 cents a share from $1.95. For [...]

The House Committee on Ways and Means has unanimously approved a measure that would revise how the tax code treats mortgage debt forgiveness, as well as make the current temporary tax deduction for private mortgage insurance permanent. Under current law, debt forgiven following mortgage foreclosure or renegotiation is considered income for tax purposes, resulting in tax [...]