Mortgage originators and the government-sponsored enterprises in the first quarter of 2017 continued to distance themselves from the contentious sparring over repurchase demands related to loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to the housing market collapse. An exclusive Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of GSE repurchase disclosures shows a spike upward in total repurchases during the first quarter, but the move was linked to ... [Includes two data charts]

Since its founding roughly five years ago, mortgage technology vendor Blend has landed five top-10 residential lenders for its digital origination platform and 20 customers overall. It also has raised $60 million in seed money from investors, but has no current plans to tap the private equity market for cash, which is probably a good sign. “We may raise more money, but not at the moment,” said company Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Nima Ghamsari. But is Blend profitable ...

Publicly traded nonbank mortgage lenders and servicers reported weak earnings during the first quarter of 2017, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends summary. The nine nonbank lenders posted a combined profit of $116.69 million for the first three months of the year. That was down 79.4 percent from the fourth quarter, although it represented a huge improvement from the $509.68 million loss the group recorded in the first three months of 2016 ... [Includes one data chart]

The only way Fannie and Freddie are going to lose money is if there’s a hedging loss. And even then, it will be a non-cash charge…

But can Walter/Ditech grow its lending business in a highly competitive market?

Some 91.8 percent of REIT MBS holdings ($211.95 billion) are in agency securities…

Freddie Mac’s Gina Healy said the GSE expects to do another front-end MI transaction this month.

CFPB Director Richard Cordray would love to sit in on a GOP caucus as well.

The Securities and Exchange Commission this week charged two former head traders who ran the commercial MBS desk at Nomura Securities International with lying intentionally to customers to boost the profits of the firm as well as their commissions. The SEC complaint alleged that traders James Im and Kee Chan inflated the price on CMBS they bought and sold for customers on the secondary market. In certain instances, the two traders allegedly pretended they were negotiating bond purchases with a third-party seller at a higher price when Nomura had already purchased the bonds at a lower price. According to the SEC, the fraud generated...

A unique disclosure Freddie Mac is providing in risk-sharing transactions can help provide MBS investors with forward-looking insight about mortgage performance, according to an analysis by Kroll Bond Rating Agency. Freddie started disclosing updated loan-to-value ratios for mortgages in its Structured Agency Credit Risk transactions in March 2016. On a quarterly basis, the government-sponsored enterprise discloses the estimated current LTVs based on Home Value Explorer (HVE), its proprietary automated valuation model. Connecticut Avenue Securities risk-sharing transactions from Fannie Mae don’t include a similar disclosure. KBRA noted...