Private mortgage insurers are winning purchase-mortgage business away from the FHA, and VA lending is also gaining ground, according to an analysis of agency mortgage-backed securities data by Inside Mortgage Trends. Lenders delivered $50.25 billion of purchase loans with private MI coverage into agency MBS during the third quarter of 2017. That represented 40.2 percent of total insured purchase loans securitized by the agencies, up from 39.3 percent ... [Includes one data chart]

The four megabanks reduced their agency mortgage servicing rights by $59.6 billion during the third quarter…

However, officials at Freddie said the claims regarding the GSE and Equifax lacked context.

Each due diligence firm applies its own interpretation of compliance...

“We continue to be bullish on the business,” said Stearns CEO David Schneider.

Ocwen’s recent barrage of regulatory settlements, coupled with the sale of the wholesale division and the recent hiring of investment banker Chris Whalen, is sparking talk...

Ocwen settled with Texas regulators as well...

The universe of servicing single-family home loans for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae continued to expand in the third quarter, but a handful of large banks wanted little to do with it. The three agencies had a combined $6.378 trillion of single-family mortgage-backed securities outstanding at the end of September, up 1.9 percent from the midway point in the year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of agency MBS disclosures. All three ... [Includes two data charts]

It’s still early in the reporting cycle for third-quarter results, but major banks so far have reported solid origination gains from the previous period, but nothing to set the world on fire. In terms of percentage gains, JPMorgan Chase reported a 12.5 percent increase from the second to the third quarter. U.S. Bancorp was up 11.0 percent, Wells Fargo had a 5.0 percent gain and Citigroup reported a 3.2 percent increase. Bank of America mortgage originations were down slightly. The five ...

Long-running tension between mortgage brokers and retail lenders with wholesale operations ratcheted up recently as a new group urged brokers to stop working with “whole-tail” lenders. Brokers Rallying Against Whole-tail Lending said it coined the term “whole-tail” lender as “a swipe at lenders that offer both wholesale and retail services on paper, when in reality, their primary business objective is to feed stolen prospect information directly to their affiliate companies.” “It is important that ...