S&P believes the gap in execution between whole-loan sales and securitization has started to narrow.

However, the VA loan program does not require a downpayment, which is a major attraction for some borrowers.

How much a loan officer earns can be determined by where his/her leads come from.

Since early September, at least 14 mortgage company acquisitions have been announced publicly, according to a database of deals compiled by Inside Mortgage Trends.

The proposed inter-agency rule covers only flood-insurance premium escrows and detached structures.

There was one piece of good news: Freddie Mac managed to boost its share of the GSE market up to 40.6 percent for all of 2014.

The average credit score on the 10th percentile of purchase mortgages increased from 555 in 2000 to 655 at the end of the third quarter of 2014.

New MBS and ABS issuance last year was down 34.4 percent from 2013, largely due to a huge decline in agency single-family MBS production, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. A total of $1.145 trillion of residential MBS and non-mortgage ABS were issued during 2014, the lowest annual production volume since 2000. Last year got off to a very slow start, with just $517.0 billion in new issuance through the first six months of 2014, before gaining pace during the second half. Total issuance fell 4.8 percent from the third to the fourth quarter. Agency MBS remained...[Includes three data charts]

The Securities and Exchange Commission uncovered a number of compliance issues at the credit rating services in 2013, according to a report released by the federal regulator at the end of December. However, compliance is improving compared with previous exams conducted by the SEC. In exams covering rating activity in 2013, the SEC found issues ranging from conflicts of interest to adherence to policies for reviewing credit ratings to the use of affiliates or third-party contractors. The SEC didn’t single out any of the rating services other than to note whether an issue occurred at one of the big three rating firms or at one of several smaller rating services. For example, the SEC said...

The U.S. non-agency MBS space is looking more inviting these days, even though progress is painfully slow and there remains plenty of room for improvement, analysts at Fitch Ratings have concluded in a report out this week. The Fitch analysts said that the underwriting of residential mortgages has improved dramatically since the financial crisis, with recent vintages demonstrating the best performance on record so far. “New legislation has completely eliminated...