Dark Matter Changes; Mfg. DPA, QC, AI, Data Decisioning Tools; A Strained Housing Market; Insurance/Climate Interview

The MBA's National Advocacy Conference in DC wrapped up this week, and any time you have a gaggle of mortgage personnel in one place, talk in the hallways inevitably turned to current market conditions. For example, servicing rights have increased in value, and MSR trading multiples are in the mid 5x range for certain cohorts (markedly higher than the 4x1 value where it was for years), depending on asset mix, recapture assumptions, and servicing execution. Servicing portfolios are being bought and sold... everyone can afford servicing wants the inside track in retaining the borrowers backing that servicing. But back to the conference… The MBA has remained focused on policy wins over the past year and is making progress on many more goals, said MBA President and CEO Bob Broeksmit, CMB. The Senate’s 21st Century ROAD to Housing Package is a step in the right direction, but issues, include a drafting error related to FHA multifamily loan limits, a single-family housing investor ban, costly FHA disclosure changes, and a proposal to divert funds from the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund to support foreclosure counseling for FHA, VA and USDA loans could be problems. And, of course, everyone is pushing for the modernization of credit scoring and reporting as well and word from the FHFA about it. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s ‘casts are Sponsored by Truework. Replace costly, error-prone verification waterfalls with a single, fully automated VOIE solution that delivers faster, more accurate, GSE-ready reports. So, your team can close more loans with less effort and lower cost. Today’s has an interview with Verisk’s Kingsley Greenland on how insurance companies are using climate modeling to improve their granularity of pricing, though ambiguity still exists.)