Nominee for HUD Secretary Purchases House Prior to Confirmation. With his Senate confirmation still up in the air, Ben Carson, President Trump’s pick to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has bought a $1.3 million house in an affluent neighborhood in Fairfax, VA, the Washingtonian has reported. According to the magazine, Carson’s new abode is a 6,400-square-foot traditional-style house with five bedrooms and four and a half baths. It is located on a 1.5 acres, a short distance from the Wolf Trap concert venue and the Meadowlark Botanical gardens. The 65-year-old neurosurgeon and his wife Candy also own million-dollar homes in Florida and Baltimore County, MD. The Senate Banking Committee approved Carson’s nomination on Jan. 24 but the full Senate has yet to vote on it. No date for a confirmation vote has been set ...

When Freddie makes that next “dividend” payment, its “account surplus” with Treasury will total $34.6 billion: federal assistance of $71.3 billion since September 2008 versus dividend payments of $105.9 billion.

The agency estimates there are 26 million Americans who are “credit invisibles...”

Over the past two years, PHH has lost $347 million, much of it caused by a private-label origination model that has fallen on hard times and rapidly declining interest rates…

In a few weeks, almost all of that profit will be swept into the coffers of the U.S. Treasury, which supported the GSE during its money losing years...

While most banks are running away from the business of servicing home mortgages, BB&T appears to like the space...

The main risks in making mortgages to foreign nationals: the borrower’s lack of credit history and issues tied to income verification.

Private mortgage insurers grew their share of the primary mortgage insurance market during 2016 even though they lost some ground during the second half of the year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. Private MIs wrote an estimated $270.30 billion of new mortgage insurance last year, a robust 23.1 percent increase from 2015. The main engine was a 24.2 percent increase in traditional, or flow, MI business, coupled with a jump in bulk primary coverage – though such activity totaled just $860.0 million in 2016. Private MIs covered...[Includes three data tables]

A key Republican leader in the House of Representatives is looking to push legislation that would effectively neuter critical aspects of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that could lead to major changes in the agency’s oversight functions and capabilities, including mortgage rulemaking, supervision and enforcement. The congressman also indicated he might use a procedural technique related to the budget to ram his legislation past Democrat opponents in the Senate. The legislative vehicle of choice is...

The secondary market for bulk agency mortgage servicing rights is beginning to pick up a decent head of steam, but one factor is holding it back from a full-throttle: worries about prepayment speeds. “We’ve had one month of low prepayment numbers,” said Mark Garland, president of MountainView Servicing Group, Denver. “A couple of more months would be better.” According to investment bankers who work the market, although rates have been on a steady climb since the November election – the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury is...