PHH Mortgage has been on the auction block for well over two months now and at least three nonbank buyers have looked at the firm, according to industry advisors close to the company. However, it remains to be seen whether a deal can get done during a year in which residential production could plunge by 30 percent or more. Industry advisors have identified as possible buyers Carrington Mortgage and Ocwen Financial. Both are growth-oriented nonbanks that have been selective buyers of servicing rights and production assets the past few years. At least one other potential buyer has been mentioned...

New single-family business volume at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to decline in early 2014, hitting the lowest quarterly total in 14 years during the first three months of the year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking. The two government-sponsored enterprises issued a total of $129.2 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2014. That was down 29.1 percent from the already weak production of the fourth quarter and off 63.7 percent from the same period in 2013. The first-quarter 2014 total marked...[Includes two data charts]

What does the CFPB think of Martin’s allegations and Raucci’s report backing her up? An agency spokeswoman did not return a media inquiry from IMFnews.

Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase both had huge drops exceeding 40 percent on mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Johnson-Crapo is wide open on what entities could issue the new MBS and even allows single firms to be loan originators, aggregators, issuers and bond guarantors.

In the pre-crash days, newly created MSRs were selling at 6 and even 7 times the servicing fee. “I even saw prices of eight,” said Chuck Klein, managing partner for Mortgage Banking Solution.

The two have petitioned Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to designate Fannie and Freddie as SIFIs. Being an SIFI means the two would be subject to higher capital standards and greater scrutiny – as though the two aren’t under enough scrutiny as it is.

Borrow short and lend long? Is there a problem with that? Don't tell that to Jamie Dimon of JPM.

One mortgage technology expert had this to say on the Ellie Mae shutdown: “This is going to get ugly. Real money is lost when you can’t close loans on time.”

“Bank, nonbank – it doesn’t matter to us. We look at where the risk to the consumer is and we try to execute our program against that,” said Peggy Twohig, assistant director in the CFPB’s Office of Supervision Policy.