When interest rates rise rapidly – as they have the past two weeks – lenders suffer. But it appears the few dozen or so hard-money and subprime lenders operating quietly in the trenches are doing just fine and are even seeing an increase in loan requests. Mark Mozilo, a principal in CALCAP Advisors, told Inside Nonconforming Markets that his hard-money firm will fund 40 loans in the second quarter of 2013, its highest quarterly volume to date. The company is just a few years old. Mozilo added that ...

Lenders that originate home loans to hold in portfolio are concerned about the regulatory consequences of originating non-qualified mortgages. While some have asked for a blanket exemption from liability for non-QMs held in portfolio, Democrats in Congress appear unlikely to approve such changes. “Congress should amend the ability-to-repay statute to grant QM status to all mortgage loans held in portfolio by community banks,” Charles Vice, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of ...

Over the past two weeks, mortgage lenders have seen their application volumes and origination pipelines get whipsawed by rising interest rates. But it’s not the run-up in rates, per se, that set off alarm bells in the industry. It’s how fast rates climbed. As Inside Mortgage Finance went to press this week, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury was at roughly 2.60 percent. On a historical basis, that’s an attractive rate – and as many lenders have pointed out: consumers can still obtain a 30-year fixed-rate conventional loan at 4 percent, depending on the points paid. But a month ago, the 10-year Treasury was...

Mortgage bankers continue to talk about declining refi applications but purchase money firms remain mostly optimistic about their prospects.

Stan Middleman, founder and CEO of Freedom Mortgage, will buy $20 million worth of stock in the new REIT, which (of course) has ties to Freedom.

Rep. Watt’s slightly more than two-pages of prepared testimony was long on biographical detail but lacking on mortgage-finance specifics.

Closely-watched market share calculations for the retail mortgage channel have been recalculated by Inside Mortgage Finance. In the past, Inside Mortgage Finance has calculated retail market shares by dividing each firm’s retail originations by the total volume of loans originated during the period with no involvement by third-party originators, either mortgage brokers or loan correspondents. Observers have pointed out...[Includes two data charts]

JPM is losing certain staffers to Freedom Mortgage. Meanwhile, is Art Ringwald contemplating a return to mortgage banking?

The revised ranking for the first quarter shows that the top retail lender, Wells Fargo, produced $60.4 billion through this channel, or 12 percent of total originations for the period.

Some non-agency participants have called for an immediate return to conforming loan limits of $417,000, which were in place in 2008 before Congress established “emergency” loan limits for high-cost areas.