Freedom Mortgage recently broke into the top 10 ranking of mortgage originators and doesn’t look to be stopping there. Through the first nine months of 2014, Freedom produced $16.4 billion in originations, a 28.5 percent increase over the same period last year. That’s a huge increase at a time when overall mortgage origination volume dropped a whopping 44.2 percent. Last week, Freedom announced a deal to acquire Continental Home Loans, a retail lender focused on the New York metro market. Freedom officials said the deal, structured as an asset acquisition transaction, will boost its monthly production volume to $2 billion. That would raise the firm a notch or two in the rankings. Beefing up its retail presence was one reason ...

Mortgage brokers and correspondents helped fuel the surge in agency mortgage-backed securities issuance during the third quarter of 2014, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loan-level MBS data. Correspondents originated 35.0 percent of the loans securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae during the third quarter, up slightly from the first two quarters of the year. Likewise, the share of broker originations edged up to 11.3 percent in the most recent three-month period.Wells Fargo ranked as the biggest seller of third-party originations during the first nine months of the year. The company pulled out of the broker market, although a few such loans trickled into agency MBS this year, but correspondents accounted ...

The biggest decline has been in non-agency MBS holdings, mostly Alt A and subprime MBS that have been subject to fast liquidation rates.

In fact, it was the highest quarterly volume in new flow business for the MI sector since the second quarter of 2008.

In the retail channel, LoanDepot ranks fifth among all nonbanks, a figure that excludes what Mortgage Master brings to the table.

The new documentation was released in conjunction with a non-agency RMBS reform symposium held in New York by SFIG and Information Management Network.

“Banks of all sizes are having problems with the new limits,” the three trade groups argue.

Wells Fargo estimates that a settlement could cost the bank at least $950 million.

We should point out that even though LoanDepot is doing the buying, the Mortgage Master brand name will survive. LD did the same thing when it combined forces with imortgage last year…

Private mortgage insurers reported hefty increases in the volume of new insurance written during the third quarter of 2014, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. The seven active private MIs wrote primary insurance coverage on $53.95 billion of new mortgage originations during the third quarter, a gain of 22.8 percent from the previous period. On a year-to-date basis, total new primary insurance by the MIs was still down 22.4 percent from the first nine months of last year, mostly because activity in the Home Affordable Refinance Program has declined sharply. HARP accounted...[Includes three data charts]