Secondary Market

After beaching on a 50-year low last week, mortgage rates posted mixed results this week, either raising costs for mortgage borrowers or lowering costs. Weekly surveys by Freddie Mac and Bankrate disagreed with each other about the benchmark 30-year loan, with the GSE posting spikes and the company showing declines to new lows. No matter which rates went up and down, analysts said in past interviews that borrowers are unlikely to return to the market. According to Freddie, the 30-year loan jumped from 4.15 percent to 4.22 percent.

Newark-based Prudential Mortgage Capital Company announced Thursday the return of one Curtis Brunton to an originations principal position at the firm's San Francisco location. After serving in a past role with Prudential, leaving it for another lender, and now returning to his old haunts, Brunton will originate commercial mortgage-backed securities with funds from a number of securitizing companies. Bruton will work with a more recently announced joint venture with Liberty Island Group, an affiliated fund of Perella Weinberg Partners' asset-based value strategy.

Mortgage giant Freddie Mac recently upgraded a number of quality control guidelines for financial institutions doing business with it. New features for lenders and servicers include the ability to submit mortgage files over electronic media, with a number of other provisions aimed at collecting mortgage insurance coverage. The GSE follows in the footsteps of Fannie Mae, which also recently amended the guidelines it approves for insurers, servicers, and lenders.

In welcome news for market watchers everywhere, FDIC-insured banks and savings institutions opened their books to reveal a $28.8-billion in aggregate profits over the second quarter, according to the federal agency.

Even as economic uncertainty and fears of a double-dip recession continue to rile the markets, some say that commercial mortgage-backed securities, recently on a downdraft, could either slowly recover over 2011 or see a fallback. According to experts, ongoing concerns about debt crises overseas and at home could dent a rebound for the CMBS markets. Stories by Bloomberg News, Retail Traffic magazine, coupled with data from Trepp Inc. and Barclays Capital, portray gray skies for CMBS.

Cresting on low tides in credit supply and buyer confidence, fewer first-time and repeat homebuyers filed mortgage applications last week, according to a weekly survey released by the Mortgage Bankers Association Wednesday. The MBA said that overall mortgage loan application volume dropped 2.4 percent, with purchases slamming into a 15-year low. The Market Composite Index, which the MBA uses to gauge loan application activity, showed a seasonally adjusted squeeze in loan volume.

Mortgage rates continued falling to new lows, according to real estate Web site Zillow, which released rates in the latest Mortgage Marketplace note Tuesday. According to Zillow, the benchmark 30-year fixed-rate loan jumped four basis points to hit 4.07 percent Saturday, up from 4.09 percent last week. Zillow tracks mortgage rates by pooling anonymous loan quotes submitted by the 1.7 million users that it says follow its Web site on a daily basis. The Zillow rates track ongoing mortgage-rate declines reported by Bankrate and Freddie Mac.

With decisions by state regulators to close mortgage insurance practices for PMI Group, pending the company's ability to meet capital requirements, mortgage insurers continue to fall under scrutiny as a troubled industry.

Despite all-time highs for home affordability, homebuilders are seeing less demand for home construction and more for multifamily rentals, with the Federal Housing Administration recently releasing a report that signals new highs for rental properties across the country. The FHA said that it has endorsed some $10.5 billion in multifamily rental housing loans ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô seven times the number of loans made three years ago and the only second time that the FHA has lent so much.

Marking a third consecutive month, new home sales fell over July, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. The drop in new home sales reflects still-weakening consumer confidence as new fears about a global economic slowdown continued to rattle stocks and markets worldwide. New single-family house sales dipped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 298,000 over July, reflecting a downward shift in estimates that fixed these numbers at a 0.7 percent decline from 300,000 homes sold over June.