News

Ten real estate investment trusts (REITs) have gone public this year, and six have outperformed the market, according to SNL Financial. Year-to-date as of October 3, the 10 REITs raised $3.4 billion through their initial public offerings. The group's best performer has been Aviv REIT with an 18.27 percent return year-to-date. Five other REIT IPOs have been announced for later this year, including a Blackstone spinoff and two prominent players in the REO-to-rental space.

Overall residential shadow inventory, as of July 2013, was 1.9 million homes, according to CoreLogic. That's the lowest shadow inventory tally reported since August 2008. The industry's current shadow inventory carries a value of $293 billion, down from $380 billion in July 2012. It represents 3.7 months' of supply and accounts for 85 percent of the 2.2 million properties that were seriously delinquent, in foreclosure, or bank-owned at July month-end.

Ally CFO James G. Mackey will soon be departing to take an executive position at Freddie Mac. Mackey will join the GSE the week of November 11 to fill the role of EVP and CFO following the departure of Ross J. Kari, who announced last year his intent to retire in the second half of 2013.

The number of homeowners eligible for refinancing has shrunk from about 10 million in December 2012 to about 5.7 million as of August, according to Lender Processing Services' (LPS) latest Mortgage Monitor report. LPS cites heightened refinance activity over the past few years and rising interest rates as reasons for the decline and sees a market ripe for home equity lines of credit as a result of rising prices.

According to Fitch Ratings, title insurance companies may be among the first in the housing sector to feel the effects of a Congress that the Brookings Institution describes as ""failing the American people."" Title insurers are sensitive to macroeconomic factors such as employment levels, consumer sentiment, and interest rates, and Fitch says the longer the government shutdown lasts, the bigger the potential profitability impact to title insurers.

Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS), a provider of technology, services, data, and analytics to the mortgage industry, announced that AmeriFirst Home Mortgage has completed its implementation of LPS' MSP mortgage and consumer loan servicing platform. AmeriFirst says it decided on LPS' system because it offered ""the complete package.""

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) touted progress made toward building a new common securitization platform between the GSEs, saying the joint venture ""reached some important milestones"" Monday. Paperwork was filed with the state of Delaware, office space has been secured for the new entity, and executive recruiting is already underway.

Investment bank FBR Capital Markets released its preview of third-quarter earnings for major U.S. banks Monday, with a cloudy outlook for mortgage banking. In general, bank stocks have underperformed the broader market by about 2 percent over the third quarter; and zeroing in on the mortgage market, FBR is not optimistic about Q3 results.

Continuing the trend observed in August, Americans' enthusiasm for the housing market abated last month as the government's fiscal policy debate came back into the spotlight. Fannie Mae says it's found that although consumers are ""generally positive"" about housing and the economy, attitudes over the last few months suggest optimism has hit a plateau, even softened.

In the latest of its consumer education videos, Zillow recently sat down with the Bipartisan Policy Center's (BPC) Barry Zigas to discuss the center's ideas for GSE reform and how they compare to current legislative efforts. After 16 months of research, hearings, and meetings with industry stakeholders, the BPC emerged with a plan for unwinding the GSEs and instituting a limited government guarantee on securities.