Excerpt from a BofA Home Loans memo…

More bank stress tests coming. Here’s why U.S. banks are pushing back on how tests work.

BofA’s clash with Fannie has taxpayer impacts

Edward Harrison of CreditWritedowns was all over the EU announcement today, and ended the day with a post about how the “voluntary” 50% writedown on Greek debt by banks skirts a default. Which means that investors who bought credit default swaps (CDS)—insurance where investors get paid in the event of a default—don’t get paid. Net [...]

The big four banks combined to write $175.4 billion in new mortgages during the three months ended Sept. 30. That is 24% lower than what these lenders wrote a year earlier. BofA’s drop noted below is a big contributor to the overall drop. Wells Fargo originated $89 billion in new mortgages, down 12% from the [...]

Usually I don’t repeat foreclosure numbers, for a variety of reasons. But the latest numbers were so bad I had to say something: the number of notices of default jumps 25.9% from the second quarter. An estimated 71,275 notices of default were filed against California properties during the three months that ended Sept. 30, with [...]

One of the questions that folks in the mortgage conference hallways were asking was, “With BofA leaving correspondent, is someone like Chase going to be next?” There is a big difference between hallway chatter and Bloomberg headlines like “MetLife May Sell Mortgage Business.” Here’s the gist: Chief Executive Officer Steven Kandarian, who took the job [...]

Below is Bank of America’s announcement that it’s closing it’s operation that buys loans from mortgage banks by year end. And here’s what it all means for consumers: BofA Cuts Off Mortgage Bankers As previously announced, Bank of America Home Loans plans to exit the correspondent mortgage lending channel and focus entirely on retail distribution [...]

WSJ has been all over BofA’s exit from the mortgage banking channel. They broke the story last month, and this weekend they broke the latest: Fortress Investment Group’s Nationstar Mortgage buy the BofA unit if negotiations hold up. Still interesting BofA considers this channel “non-core” when it accounted for 47% of the bank’s total mortgage [...]

Did you know that Bank of America kept the Countrywide name after its bargain purchase in 2008, and that “it would consider putting the unit into bankruptcy if litigation losses threaten to cripple the parent”? Here’s the alphabet soup of entities BofA is juggling: The transaction was completed July 1, 2008 with Countrywide Financial Corporation [...]