Daily Dose

How the Mortgage Insurance Industry Traded Its Unwieldy Paper System for Sleek Digital Processing. Editor's note: This select print feature appeared in the April 2015 edition of MReport magazine.

The Atlanta-based bank reported $411 million in net income, or 78 cents per share, which translates to a 7 percent increase over Q1 of 2014 and $33 million more than in Q4.

A core argument of the report is that the government’s attempt to handle the economic disasters of the past several decades have resulted in a bloated and redundant regulatory infrastructure that has made a mess of its own efforts to police the nation’s financial system.

Purchase mortgage applications rebounded sharply in April from a recent slowdown, reaching their highest level in almost two years, marking the second monthly surge in purchase apps this year. Combined with continued low mortgage rates, the rise in purchase apps could indicate a strong homebuying season in the spring and summer.

Quicken, the largest lender of Federal Housing Administration mortgage loans in the country, filed its suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, claiming the agencies have been trying to bully the company into making “blatantly false” statements and demanding the company pay “an inexplicable penalty or face legal action,” according to a statement released by Quicken Friday.

Following weeks of debate over whether the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) would be lowering its fees to guarantee mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the ...

In order to prevent these losses in the future, the GSEs moved to strengthen their financial requirements of approved PMI insurers, thus reducing overall risk. The new requirements will ensure that PMIs can meet their agreed-upon obligations regardless of current economic conditions or the marketplace.

For San Francisco-based Wells Fargo in Q1, revenues increased by 3 percent year-over-year up to $21.3 billion. Although net income slightly declined from the same quarter a year ago from $5.9 billion to $5.8 billion, noninterest income for the bank jumped by $29 million up to $10.3 billion. The bank received higher income in Q1 from trading activities, debt security gains, mortgage origination gains, and insurance, but the higher income was offset by lower income in mortgage servicing, which was at $108 million for Q1 compared to $235 million for Q4 2014. Wells Fargo posted mortgage banking noninterest income of $1.5 billion for Q1.

According to Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American, the biggest takeaway is that the housing market, particularly the existing homes sector, is drastically underperforming. The impetus for this underperformance, he said, is an overall lack of buyer equity throughout the nation.

“Get Financially Fit In and Around Your Home” rounds out National Financial Literacy Month with a discussion on what prospective homebuyers can learn and what existing homeowners can do to bring down expenses.