Timothy Zimmerman, president and CEO of Standard Bank, said he’s bothered by too small a percentage of lenders making loans outside the QM parameters.

Zandi and deRitis believe that the FHA is on track to be able to lower its mortgage insurance premiums by 50 basis points to an average of 120 basis points for total upfront and annual premiums.

According to one analyst, "Ackman is reloading the boat with the extra cash he has on hand. Hopefully, others will join him.”

More trouble for Walter Investment Management? Meanwhile, according to NTC, as many as 490,000 homeowners could be affected by faulty servicer database records.

Mortgage lenders continued to work through a huge pile of repurchase demands related to loans securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the housing market crash. The two government-sponsored enterprises reported a total of $1.269 billion of repurchases by sellers during the second quarter of 2014, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter, of Securities and Exchange Commission filings by the two GSEs. That compared to just $522.5 million in repurchases during the first quarter of this year. As has been the case since the buyback issue mushroomed several years ago, most of the second-quarter repurchases focused...[Includes one data chart]

Mid-sized commercial banks are starting to turn up as potential buyers of mortgage banking franchises again, a trend that has not been seen in years, according to investment bankers that ply their trade in the space. “I’m working on two deals right now where the buyers are well capitalized commercial banks,” said Larry Charbonneau, a principal in Charbonneau & Associates, a boutique advisory firm based in Spring, TX. Charbonneau said he cannot identify the buyers due to non-disclosure agreements, but hopes to eventually. He noted that both banks have assets in the $2 billion to $3 billion range. “One of the banks isn’t...

State regulators recently proposed expanding the data that state-licensed lenders must report on the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry’s mortgage call report. The State Regulatory Registry said the data help state regulators supervise licensees, determine examination schedules, monitor compliance and calculate assessments. The SRR was established by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors and the American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators. The SRR owns and operates the NMLS and has required state-licensed lenders to submit quarterly call report data since 2011. On Oct. 1, the SRR proposed...[Includes one data chart]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week proposed two narrow revisions to its complex mortgage origination disclosure rule, leaving the industry guessing what further changes could come as lenders gear up to implement a massive rule known as TRID: the Truth-in-Lending/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act integrated disclosure. For most lenders, the most significant proposed change would relax the requirement that lenders provide a revised loan estimate on the same day that a consumer’s rate is locked. After considering industry feedback, CFPB staff concluded that such a short turnaround may be challenging for lenders that allow consumers to lock interest rates late in the day or after business hours. This could mean...

Thanks to rapidly improving delinquency rates and real estate values, the bloom appears to be off the rose for specialty servicers that built their business on processing delinquent and high-touch mortgages that are guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA. Over the past month, layoffs have plagued both Wingspan Portfolio Services, Dallas, and Residential Credit Solutions of Fort Worth, TX. Moreover, industry officials who work in the servicing sector believe...

A group of small and mid-sized lenders this week renewed their request to the Department of Housing and Urban Development to cut FHA’s annual premiums to improve borrower access to credit, a change that likely depends on the annual audit of the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. Sources expect the next annual audit report to show further improvement in the health of the MMI Fund, which had a negative economic value of $1.3 billion in September 2013, the end of the government’s 2013 fiscal year. Beyond getting back into the black, the MMIF still must reach a 2.0 percent statutory capital reserve requirement, which the last audit predicted would occur next year. The fiscal 2014 audit report is expected...