A handful of firms say they are still aggressively recruiting residential loan officers who have a solid background in purchase-money lending – that is, sales professionals with deep ties to Realtors and home builders.

Also note that the ATR rule provides additional flexibility to small lenders in that the safe harbor has been expanded to 3.5 percent over the average prime offer rate.

Although the settlement has been filed and agreed to by PNC, it still requires court approval.

After months of investor uncertainty and occasional hand-wringing, it has begun – the “tapering,” that is. This week, the Federal Reserve announced that it would scale back the growth in its agency MBS portfolio from $40 billion a month to $35 billion a month, starting in January. The central bank said it would continue to reinvest principal payments from its huge agency MBS portfolio, which was up to $1.483 trillion at the last official reading. With new production in the agency MBS market falling dramatically since April, the Fed’s target...

State attorneys general extended the national servicing settlement to the nonbank sector with an extra emphasis on servicing transfers.

Analysts forecast uncertainty for the agency MBS market going into 2014 as the policy landscape reshapes itself and investors cautiously adapt to the shape of things to come. Look for 2014 to be a “year of transition” amid a slowly rising range of U.S. Treasury yields, a slowly recovering economy, and a Federal Reserve that transitions away from quantitative easing toward forward guidance, according to RBS analysts. RBS noted...

The amount of outstanding mortgage-backed securities increased again in the third quarter of 2013.

While the jumbo MBS market has all but ground to a halt in recent months, industry analysts expect that issuance will resume at some point early next year, but the 2014 forecast is dicey. Some $12.23 billion in jumbo MBS was issued through three quarters in 2013. The market hasn’t seen much activity in the final months of the year due to a lack of demand from investors and continued appetite from bank portfolios. A number of industry analysts expect...

A long running class-action fraud lawsuit on behalf of Fannie Mae investors and accounting firm KPMG was settled.

The supply of outstanding residential MBS grew by 0.3 percent during the third quarter, hitting $6.383 trillion, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. The Federal Reserve gobbled up most of the increase. Ginnie Mae remained the fastest-growing MBS product. Its $1.377 trillion in outstanding single-family MBS was up 2.6 percent from the second quarter, and it expanded by 8.1 percent from September 30, 2012. Fannie Mae posted a more modest 0.8 percent increase in single-family MBS outstanding, while the Freddie Mac supply shrank slightly. The non-agency MBS market continued...[Includes two data charts]