Relatively new players to the world of Fannie Mae approvals are starting to gripe a little more about the “volume curbs” that the GSE is placing on its “newbie” customers. One mortgage banker, who spoke under the condition his name not be used, told Inside Mortgage Finance ...

Nationstar Mortgage this week priced $300 million of asset-backed notes in what the company called “the first ever” securitization of collateral backed by agency servicing advances, a sign that nonbanks are beginning to see more liquidity for mortgage servicing rights. The yield on the Nationstar paper is an attractive 1.46 percent. The term is three years. And in another development in the same market, Home Loan Servicing Solutions, which is affiliated with Ocwen Financial, has signaled...

Although mortgage profits reported for the fourth quarter, so far, have been strong, trouble may lie ahead for the sector with lower gain-on-sale margins and moderately contracting spreads, according to analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

Inside Mortgage Finance shortly will publish its final 4Q ranking of FHA lenders, but it appears that the October-December period was one of the strongest in terms of loan production in quite some time ...plus other mortgage briefs.

The government-sponsored enterprises are working several different risk-transfer pilots and will soon issue the securities, according to officials at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Non-agency MBS investors appear eager for the securities, though a number of regulatory concerns remain, including complications with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Patrick Lawler, chief economist at the FHFA, said a risk-sharing transaction will hopefully be issued in the “not too distant future.” Speaking at the American Securitization Forum’s ASF 2013 conference this week in Las Vegas, Lawler and other officials with the FHFA and GSEs said risk-sharing transactions are a high priority this year. “The commitment is...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said it has settled one of its numerous lawsuits against non-agency mortgage-backed securities issuers for misrepresenting deals that were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the mortgage market collapse.

Despite the bad press and the elimination of the standard fixed-rate reverse mortgage product from the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program, reverse mortgages will continue to thrive simply because people grow old, former Ginnie Mae chief Joe Murin told Inside FHA Lending.

Lenders One, the nation’s largest mortgage cooperative, is telling its members they need to get their Fannie Mae servicing approvals by the end of January to be eligible for discounts under an affinity deal it has with the GSE.

Envoy Mortgage, a privately held nonbank, is the latest lender to jump into the correspondent lending arena. On Wednesday the firm issued a statement saying it has hired two industry veterans – Dan Hastings and Todd Cheney – to build and run the new division. Formed in 1997, Envoy has been a retail-only lender funding in 48 states… Plus other mortgage news briefs.

Bank of America, which is in the process of selling roughly $308 billion worth of mortgage servicing rights, recently trimmed its servicing staff by at least 700 workers...