The frothy prices being offered for MSRs are beginning to cool somewhat. “There’s definitely a tighter range on bids lately,” said Matt Maurer, managing director of MountainView Servicing Group.

Paul Rozo, who runs PRMG, told us that he is not a big fan of call centers and that every LO in his organization is a “hunter,” a sales person “who relies on referral business and/or handling their own marketing."

Buyback resolutions declined by 28 percent from the second quarter, even as the government-sponsored enterprises wrapped up large-scale settlements with a handful of their largest sellers.

Many mortgage originators and aggregators say they would use some form of recording, either audio or audio/video, to help with QM compliance and fighting potential lawsuits.

Freedom Mortgage chief Stan Middleman sees a "vacuum" in the mortgage market caused by retreating commercial banks.

In its successful civil suit against Bank of America, DOJ estimated that the two GSEs lost $850 million from thousands of loans acquired through Countrywide's “Hustle” program.

PennyMac is showing that it's hungry for mortgage servicing deals.

According to Alice Alvey of Indecomm Mortgage U, “many shops are reassessing originator comp plans for January 2014 to adjust to the changing margins and seize the opportunity to blame it on the change in the law."

After a relatively strong first eight months of the year, no jumbo MBS were issued in September or October. Although investor interest seems tepid, the market is showing signs of life as Citigroup issued its first post-crisis jumbo MBS this week, and Redwood Trust offered its first jumbo deal since August. The activity comes just weeks after Shellpoint Partners tried twice to sell a jumbo MBS, eventually pulling the deal and opting for a whole-loan sale. Pricing for jumbo MBS has improved enough for Citi and Redwood to test the market, and investors have also shown strong interest in other recent non-agency offerings. The $209.95 million Citigroup Mortgage Loan Trust 2013-J1 received...

Further declines in refinance activity and some softening in home-purchase lending pushed agency single-family MBS production down to just $93.57 billion in October, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. October was the first month since September 2011 that agency MBS issuance fell below the $100 billion mark. Production last month was down 12.3 percent from September, and it represented the sixth consecutive monthly decline. There was...[Includes two data charts]