Former investment banker and Freddie Mac executive Bruce Witherell has parted ways with Promontory MortgagePath, a vendor owned by Eugene Ludwig, who once headed the OCC. Witherell is currently fielding offers.

In one of the largest M&A deals of the year, Freedom has agreed to buy RoundPoint Mortgage but details are hard to come by, including the issue of debt assumption. Meanwhile, industry advisors fear that declining interest rates might put other transactions on hold.

In a speech this week before the annual secondary market conference of the Mortgage Bankers Association, FHFA Director Mark Calabria sounded a little bit like the Mark Calabria of the Cato Institute.

We're halfway through the second quarter and MSR sales are middling, a byproduct of lower interest rates and what may lie ahead. However, dealmakers believe 2H could bring a boom in sales activity.

Pretium Partners, a fund managed by former Goldman Sachs official Don Mullen, is reportedly in talks to buy non-QM lender Deephaven Mortgage. Will a deal come off? Deephaven has Goldman ties as well in the form of CEO Matt Nichols, a former alum of the white-shoe investment banking firm.

The National Association of Realtors this week picked apart FHFA's plan to recapitalize the GSEs and release them from conservatorship. NAR, by the way, favors a model where the GSEs are morphed into shareholder-owned utilities.

Possibly dozens of VA lenders have been handed subpoenas from the federal government tied to VA delinquencies and possibly loan churning. Is this a fishing expedition or something more? Needless to say, lenders are worried.

An auction of Ditech Financial is scheduled for the end of May. At stake is not only the company’s future — and the jobs of roughly 2,700 full-time employees — but $187.2 billion in mortgage servicing rights. If bidders fail to show up, Ch. 7 will likely be the next step.