Secondary Market

Titan Capital Solutions (TCS), a wholly owned correspondent investment subsidiary of Denver-based Titan Lenders Corp., has recently begun to purchase certain investor-rejected loans, the company announced Thursday.

Luxembourg-based mortgage servicer Altisource Portfolio Solutions is cutting more than 800 jobs both overseas and at home in the wake of what was a bumpy year for the company. The move was announced in a conference call with investors on Friday that saw Altisource management working to reassure shareholders who have seen their stock drop more than 80 percent in the last year.

In a report released Monday morning, Fitch outlined five big events—all of which have taken place in the past few months—that, taken together, "could have a relatively meaningful impact on home buyer psychology, pent-up demand and housing trends in 2015 and beyond," the company says.

According to MountainView Servicing Group, which is acting as facilitator for the sale, the portfolio is entirely made up of fixed-rate and first-lien product and features low delinquencies. The latest offering is the fourth billion-dollar-plus portfolio to be offered through MountainView in as many months.

While the onslaught of new mortgage regulations in the last year has created headaches for lenders, it's had a clear positive impact in one area, Fitch Ratings says in a new report: the residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) sector. In its latest look at the RMBS segment, the company says that while the market still has some rebuilding left to do, it "has seen some rather substantial improvements of late," owing in large part to improved loan underwriting standards in recent years.

Speaking as a guest presenter at the Rotary Club of Atlanta on Monday, Fannie Mae President and CEO Timothy Mayopoulos warned against any type of reform where housing finance is concerned, telling the audience that “the (current) system works,” according to a report from the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Fannie Mae's gross mortgage portfolio took a huge downward turn in November, while the mortgage giant's Book of Business inched upward, according to Fannie Mae's November 2014 Monthly Summary released earlier this week. The balance of the gross mortgage portfolio dropped from $4.36 billion in October down to $4.24 billion in November, marking the 52nd time in the last 53 months Fannie Mae's portfolio declined month-over-month.

An online petition calling for the end of the Federal Housing Finance Agency's conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been posted to the White House's "We the People" Web page.

As the new year rolls in, DS News is taking a look back at some of the biggest secondary market headlines and stories of 2014.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released a statement warning organizations that label mortgage loans with "super-priority lien" status that such loans will not push loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the secondary position. The warning was aimed mainly at energy retrofit financing programs and homeowners associations that attach super-priority lien status to mortgages because of the risk they pose to taxpayers while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are under conservatorship.