IMA’s Piercy noted that deals can get done – as long as the seller is realistic about pricing.

IU’s Tim Pagliara owns roughly 346,000 shares of Freddie’s junior preferred stock, according to court documents.

Kingstown is known as a value-oriented hedge fund, with roughly $1.5 billion of assets under management.

Industry observers are weighing in on the redesigned Uniform Residential Loan Application, an industry standard that has largely remained the same for the past 20 years, until now. The GSEs published the new form last week to give lenders ample time to get familiar with it. The updated form won’t officially be in use until Jan. 1, 2018. The URLA is for single-family loans submitted to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae, as well as mortgages insured by the FHA, VA or U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Services. The redesigned form falls under the larger Federal Housing Finance Agency and GSE initiative to standardize single-family mortgage data in the U.S.

Price is paramount to buyers purchasing a mortgage company, but equally important is bringing over the salesforce – namely loan officers – and making sure they stay happy under the new owners. That’s one of many insights contained in a new “In-Focus” report from The Stratmor Group, a consulting firm that plies its trade in the M&A circuit as well as other sectors of the industry. “While the numbers and related analysis are fundamental to the negotiating process, there is an ...

Although the new requirements could prompt an increase in costs, analysts said a new requirement aimed at increasing the number of times troubled borrowers are evaluated for loss mitigation will be particularly helpful in certain states…

The GSE buyback total was down 20.6 percent from the first quarter…

FHFA’s TCPA Exemption Request Denied. The Federal Communications Commission turned down the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s request to exempt GSE mortgage servicing calls from prohibitions against robocalls, or automated dialing and calling systems, to contact delinquent borrowers. It refused the request, citing the exemption for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans “because little in the way of facts has been entered into the record.” According to the commission, the FHFA, in its request, cites two different exemption provisions. However, the FCC said the FHFA failed to provide the information necessary for determining whether the calls at issue would satisfy the threshold requirements for exemption. Under the rule, calls to cell phones are capped at no more than three attempts...

Panelists, including former Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Ed DeMarco, said that mortgage servicing has evolved over the years but the costs are still decades behind the times. During a recent seminar on mortgage servicing hosted by CoreLogic and the Urban Institute, industry experts discussed rising costs and the frequency of servicing transfers.Panelists, including DeMarco, now a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, said that mortgage servicing compensation has not changed in decades as the servicing industry itself has undergone what he called “profound changes. The minimum servicing fee for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been stuck at 25 basis points since the 1980s, he said.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency issued a proposed rule last week that would reduce the amount of approval the Federal Home Loan Banks would need from the regulator before engaging in new business activities. This comes after the FHLBanks wrote the FHFA in 2013 following a request for public comment on existing regulations. The agency said this was done to help improve the banks’ effectiveness and reduce their burden. The agency announced the rule modifying part of its regulations regarding requirements for the FHLBanks’ new business activity in the Aug. 23, 2016, Federal Register.