Secondary Market

Despite seeing a decline in average gross ROI and average gross profit on flipped homes, California still ranked fourth among the 50 states and District of Columbia in flipped homes as a percentage of total sales in Q2, according to RealtyTrac.

More than two years after the central bank kick off its latest economic stimulus program, policymakers at the Federal Reserve once again voted this week to scale down monthly asset purchases—and hinted that the end is in sight.

In a settlement announced Friday, HSBC agreed to pay $550 million to FHFA to resolve allegations it violated state and federal securities laws in its selling of private-label securities to the GSEs between 2005 and 2007. HSBC stopped issuing and distributing MBS in 2007.

Federal Reserve governor Daniel Tarullo echoed Gruenberg's statement, though he was less concrete on a timeline: "I don't know whether I'd say by the end of the year, but I think we're definitely in the home stretch." As it was proposed in 2011, the rule originally called for securities issuers to hold on to 5 percent of a mortgage's risk after selling it unless the borrower made a 20 percent down payment.

The securities "would combine the best features of each of the current securities," such that "the security would have the superior pooling features of the current Fannie Mae securities and the superior disclosure features of the Freddie Mac securities," according to the Urban Institute.

With the Federal Reserve on track to end its monthly bond purchases (currently at a rate of $25 billion and falling), Bove cautions that the loss of one of the tools used to help lift housing out of its post-recession rut could hurt the market, especially as interest rates start to tick back up.

Avenue 365, a Pennsylvania-based national title insurance and settlement services provider, has announced the hiring of David Tiberio as vice president of default services and as a national account manager.

Freddie Mac's single-family refinance-loan purchase and guarantee volume was $9.2 billion in July, representing about 40 percent of total new single-family mortgage portfolio activity. Relief refinance mortgages accounted for 20 percent of the company's single-family refinance volume based on unpaid principal balance.

A new report from Fitch Ratings found that U.S. prime jumbo residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) issued since the start of 2010 are unlikely to see a "meaningful increase in prepayments, even if interest rates stay low." The company believes that the lack of prepayments will result in an increased average life of the mortgages in these trusts, further increasing the period of default risk.

The highest delinquency to date of any post-crisis residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) doesn't indicate any trend of future delinquencies, according to an analysis by Fitch Ratings. The delinquency, according to the company, came about due to a transfer of servicing, and doesn't point to any widespread post-crisis late payment increases.