Monday Morning Cup of Coffee takes a look at news crossing HousingWire’s weekend desk.
Ally Bank, the subsidiary of Ally Financial Inc., said it’s exploring options for offloading the remaining agency mortgage servicing rights in its portfolio and what’s left of its business lending operations.
The news follows a week-long bidding process for mortgage servicing rights tied to the company’s Residential Capital unit, which offloaded assets in a bankruptcy auction last week.
Ally says its agency MSR portfolio has an unpaid principal balance of $122 billion. The unit buys mortgages from correspondent lenders and wholesale loan brokers. Ally announced in July it would leave the warehouse lending business and expects to do so by year’s end.
Goldman Sachs is reporting that the 2012 election looks more likely to have meaningful effects on economic policy than most other elections in recent memory. “While every election is important, this election outcome is likely to be viewed by markets as a signal for the direction of policy in three critical areas,” said the investment firm, in an email.
At the top of the list of challenges for the winner (which they say Obama is only 60% likely to win) is increasing the debt limit once again. This should put off major challenges concerning the fiscal cliff until a long-term solution can be found.
Another issue is the risk of another sovereign downgrade. The big three ratings agencies give different timelines for potential downgrades, with Standard & Poor’s saying it would lower the rating last, in 2014, if the country can’t come up with a plan to handle its debt. The Goldman analysts say whomever is in the Oval office will be face with coming up with the unenviable task of creating a deficit reduction agreement of $2 trillion over 10 years
Denver is a market where multifamily complex owners and operators can gain a great deal of yield. The apartment vacancy rate in the Denver metro area is now as low as 4.3% for the third quarter, the lowest quarterly rate in 12 years, the Apartment Association of Metro Denver and the Colorado Division of Housing said. It’s also down from 4.9% last year.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. shut down NOVA Bank in Berwyn, Pa., on Friday. A bank could not be located to take over the failed institution’s services, so the FDIC said it would handle the funds and mail out checks to customers. The intervention’s cost to the entire fund was not provided.
