Many mortgage originators and aggregators say they would use some form of recording, either audio or audio/video, to help with QM compliance and fighting potential lawsuits.

Freedom Mortgage chief Stan Middleman sees a "vacuum" in the mortgage market caused by retreating commercial banks.

According to Alice Alvey of Indecomm Mortgage U, “many shops are reassessing originator comp plans for January 2014 to adjust to the changing margins and seize the opportunity to blame it on the change in the law."

There was no surprise about why. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae securitized a total of $41.71 billion of refinance loans in October, down 22 percent from the previous month.

Glenn Costello, a senior managing director at KBRA, said the securitization of non-QM loans will require additional credit enhancement relative to QMs.

If a residential loan officer isn't doing at least six units per month, should he (or she) be fired?

The bipartisan Senate blueprint for secondary mortgage market reform includes several key provisions designed to facilitate small-lender access when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are no longer around.

The mortgage slowdown will separate the men from the boys, the girls from the ladies. It's time to fire all underperforming loan officers, says mortgage consultant David Lykken.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this week reported a combined $3.53 billion of mortgage repurchases and other buyback resolutions during the third quarter of 2013, the lowest quarterly amount in three years, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. Buyback resolutions declined by 28.2 percent from the second quarter, even as the government-sponsored enterprises wrapped up large-scale settlements with a handful of their largest sellers. Fannie and Freddie so far this year ... [Includes one data chart]

Shrinking default rates and lower refinance volumes have forced a shift in the mortgage industry’s focus to the purchase market, but lenders must beware that the current business environment is vastly different than yesterday’s purchase market, experts said at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual convention last week. Matthew Vernon, a home loan sales executive at Bank of America, told attendees that a small but critical distinction to remember is that lenders aren’t going into a purchase market ...