The Blackstone Group this week finally completed its purchase of all or parts of PMAC Lending, a California-based lender that will help the investment banking firm establish itself in the red-hot West Coast mortgage market. Although the publicly traded Blackstone has maintained a cone of silence regarding its talks with PMAC, employees of the Chino Hills lender began reporting the news themselves through various social media outlets, including Facebook. At least two other nonbank lenders are in talks with Blackstone, one in California and one in Pennsylvania. A spokeswoman for Blackstone declined...

A highway funding bill signed by President Obama late last week included a provision aimed at collecting more taxes related to interest payments on mortgages. The mortgage industry noted that it won concessions on the provision, delaying the implementation date and limiting the amount of data to be collected. The brunt of the new revenue also looks as though it will be collected from borrowers. H.R. 3236, the Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act of 2015, included a seemingly simple provision regarding the reporting of mortgage interest on IRS Form 1098. Servicers use the form to report mortgage interest of $600 or more received during a year. The highway funding bill will require...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appears to have declared war on several decades’ worth of business practices as it encourages lenders and real estate service providers to end their “marketing service agreements” with each other. Moreover, according to industry officials, the CFPB is just getting started on its crackdown as it tries to eliminate both legal and under-the-table business arrangements where a lender – in theory – provides something of value to vendors that it’s conducting business with. The first sign that the mortgage industry is concerned...

The fastest-growing sectors of the mortgage market during the second quarter of 2015 were jumbo loans and government-insured production, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. The conventional-conforming segment remains the biggest piece of the mortgage market, accounting for 52.8 percent of originations during the second quarter. Back in early 2013, when refinance activity accounted for three of every four new home loans, the conventional-conforming share was 68.1 percent. Lenders generated...[Includes two data charts]

PHH would not name the private label client that did not renew.

The AIG transaction, which would transfer risk from UGI to investors, resembles previous bond deals executed by Radian and MGIC.

Redwood executives said competition has cut into margins, prompting the reduction in its forecast.

Thanks to second quarter profits posted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Treasury Department will be richer by $8.3 billion...

Over the winter, the VA program had quietly become a much more significant factor in the government-insured market...

Residential lenders funded $445 billion in the second quarter, one of the best readings in two years, according to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance.