Quicken Loans this week went where no lender in the mortgage industry has gone before: Suing the U.S. government for suggesting it’s been doing a crappy job of originating FHA loans. Its legal action not only caught most of the industry by surprise, but resulted in loud applause from the Mortgage Bankers Association and K&L Gates partner Larry Platt. A number of major lenders have paid...

Five Oaks will retain all the subordinate classes, the servicing rights and the IOs.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency late last week directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop charging the 25 basis point “adverse market” fee assessed on all loans since the financial crises, but most lower-risk loans won’t get any reduction in loan-level pricing adjustments. As expected, the FHFA did not make any changes to the “base” guaranty fees charged by the two government-sponsored enterprises. Current fees, on average, are at an “appropriate” level. “We are going to monitor this on an ongoing or quarterly basis and we’ll adjust based on market conditions,” said Sandra Thompson, FHFA’s deputy director. The regulator instructed...

Most of the slack is being taken up by nonbanks, which serviced $1.571 trillion of agency MBS at March 31.

Many real estate agents report that appraisal costs have risen and AMCs’ overhead may be responsible...

Most of Altisource's business is tied to Ocwen, which is in the process of ridding its servicing portfolio of agency loans.

It's always possible that Green Tree could turn around and sue HUD before HUD sues them, which is what Quicken Loans did.

Is Blackstone's purchase of a mortgage lender a "one-off" deal or will other Street firms follow suit?

Some 97 lenders contributed to the pending security from Redwood, led by PrimeLending with a 9.0 percent share.

On IMA’s other deal, the brokerage firm is offering $100 million per month of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac “flow” product.