In late August, a notice appeared on the website of the Federal Trade Commission under the banner of the agency’s “pre-merger notification program,” identifying Wells as the winning bidder…

Mortgage lenders harvested a landmark crop of purchase-money mortgages during the second quarter, fueled partly by continuing growth in the first-time buyer segment, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. An estimated $307.0 billion of purchase loans were originated in the second quarter, up a stunning 49.8 percent from the first three months of the year. That was the highest quarterly volume for purchase-mortgage lending since the third quarter of 2006. Purchase loans accounted for 67.5 percent of the estimated $455.0 billion in first-lien mortgage originations during the April-June cycle, the highest such share since at least 2003. First-time buyers contributed...[Includes three data tables]

Warehouse providers of credit ended the second quarter of 2017 with $64.0 billion of commitments on their books, a modest 8.5 percent sequential gain, reflecting a strong – but not an overheated – origination market for nonbank originators. Compared to the same quarter a year ago, commitments increased 12.3 percent. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance this week, credit managers are...[Includes one data table]

The new security is backed solely by loans from Caliber...

The delinquency rate on residential mortgages increased slightly in the second quarter, suggesting that years of improvements could be leveling off. The mortgage delinquency rate increased from 4.32 percent at the end of March to 4.39 percent at June 30, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Large Servicer Delinquency Index. The delinquency rate reading remained below the 4.99 percent level seen at the midway point in 2016. “Market normalization has slowed...[Includes one data table]

Although the National Credit Union Administration and a top CU trade group favor allowing credit unions to buy mortgage servicing rights in the secondary market, don’t look for these “nonprofit” depositories to become significant players anytime soon. At least that’s the opinion of a handful of investment bankers and others who ply their trade in the MSR market. For starters, CUs are not...

PHH Corp. and Realogy Holdings Corp. and some of their subsidiaries and affiliates recently agreed to a $17 million settlement to bring to an end a putative class-action lawsuit over allegedly deceptive and collusive practices in violation of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. At issue were allegations of arranging kickbacks for unlawful referrals of title services. The plaintiffs in the case alleged...

Lenders and servicers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages notched a big win in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which found that a federal bar on foreclosure on government-sponsored enterprise loans preempted Nevada’s superiority lien law. As a published decision, the court’s ruling in Berezovsky v. Moniz resolves the dispute in favor of the federal foreclosure bar, according to Marc James Ayers and R. Aaron Chastain, attorneys with Bradley Arant Boult Cummings. It serves as a binding precedent in the Ninth Circuit and should guide other circuits in deciding cases involving homeowners associations’ super-priority liens, they said. In Berezovsky, the panel affirmed...

A proposal by federal regulators to delay tougher capital requirements for mortgage servicing assets will have a “marginally positive impact” on banks subject to the proposal, according to banking regulators. Near the end of August, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. issued a proposed rule that would extend the current treatment on mortgage servicing rights and related assets, delaying tougher standards established by Basel III. The proposal would apply to banks that aren’t subject to the “advanced approaches” capital rules – generally banks with less than $250 billion in total assets. “For small banking organizations that have significant amounts of MSAs ... the proposal could...

Meanwhile, United Wholesale Mortgage CEO Mat Ishbia said the nation’s largest wholesaler is not cancelling any closings because of Irma, at least not yet...