Freddie Launches Broker Training Program to Boost REO Sales. Freddie Mac announced this week it has launched a new program to train real estate agents how to better move real estate-owned homes through its HomeSteps sales unit. Freddie’s new Certified Community Stabilization Expert program is an eight-hour online course developed by San Diego-based Community Asset Solutions to teach the latest lessons for selling REO homes, according to Chris Bowden, senior vice president, HomeSteps. The CCSE program curriculum is designed to help real estate professionals “work more effectively with nonprofits and local governments, take advantage of public initiatives for maintaining properties and create new outreach efforts for owner-occupant buyers, especially low- and moderate-income homebuyers,” said Bowden.

A significant but continued decline in GSE refinance activity helped contribute to an overall dip in the volume of single-family mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in October, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. Fannie and Freddie issued $67.7 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities in October, a 13.8 percent decline from September but a 2.9 percent rise for the first 10 months of 2013. Deliveries of refinance loans to Fannie and Freddie have declined steadily since January.

Combined net income for the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks dropped 26.4 percent to $537 million in the third quarter, according to the Federal Home Loan Bank Office of Finance. The FHLBanks’ net income for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2013, was $1.847 billion, a 5.0 percent decrease compared to the same period in 2012. “These decreases were driven by lower net interest income, partially offset by improvements in non-interest income,” noted the Office of Finance.

So far this year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have resolved some $30.99 billion of buyback demands through a combination of loan repurchases and indemnifications for the GSEs’ losses, nearly double the $15.66 billion in resolutions recorded during the first nine months of 2012, according to an analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated publication. The figures refer to the unpaid principal balance of loans subject to a repurchase demand, not the actual payment by the lender. Fannie and Freddie reported a combined $3.53 billion of mortgage repurchases and other buyback resolutions during the third quarter of 2013, the lowest quarterly amount in three years.

Mortgage-banking operations owned by banks and thrifts of all sizes reported huge declines in earnings during the third quarter, although some organizations fared significantly better than others, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. As a group, banks and thrifts reported net earnings of $4.76 billion on their mortgage-banking activity during the third quarter. That was down 41.7 percent from the second quarter, and it marked the lowest three-month ... [Includes one data chart]

One of the worst-kept secrets in mortgage technology is that Ellie Mae, which went public almost two years ago, is entertaining offers. But can the firm – the brainchild of technology veteran Sig Anderman – get a deal done before originations fall even more? Not surprisingly, Anderman isn’t taking press calls on the issue. As a rule – and to avoid disclosure violations with the Securities and Exchange Commission – public firms usually don’t discuss the blow-by-blow on takeover talks. However, that isn’t ...

Officials at Stonegate Mortgage suggest that the nonbank is primed for growth with plans to acquire a number of small originators that focus on purchase-mortgage production. Stonegate completed its initial public offering of stock in October and raised more than $220 million in equity capital this year, including $124 million from the IPO. Stonegate refers to its growth strategy as “retail tuck-in acquisitions.” The nonbank recently hired a management team to oversee the acquisition of lenders ...

With mortgage origination volume dropping sharply and gain-on-sale margins shrinking, it’s not surprising that the biggest downturn in mortgage-banking income during the third quarter came from production-related activities rather than servicing. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings shows that 10 major lenders reported a total of $1.66 billion in production-related income during the third quarter of 2013. That was down a whopping 62.5 percent from the second quarter. Total mortgage [Includes one data chart]

Vantage Production LLC is trying to build compliance, suitability and accountability into the mortgage sales process – things that can help lenders comply with the daunting qualified-mortgage rule as they streamline their sales and marketing processes. The vendor says its Vantage Integrated Production (VIP), an enterprise-level customer-relationship management platform, enhances loan-officer productivity and increases sales while providing corporate control of compliance. This software-as-a-service ...

Many of the big brand names in the mortgage industry have backpedaled from the correspondent and broker market, but a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loan-level Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac data reveals a very deep and diverse group of loan aggregators still remains in the market. During the first nine months of 2013, there were 512 different companies that sold mortgages to the government-sponsored enterprises that had been originated by loan correspondents of mortgage brokers. Some 324 of ... [Includes data chart]