The amount of equity U.S. homeowners could access rose by almost $570 billion in 2016, reaching $4.7 trillion last year, thanks to an extended streak of home price appreciation. This was the highest level of “tappable” equity seen since 2006, according to a new report from Black Knight Financial Services. Perhaps just as impressive, an eye-popping 44 percent of refinanced mortgages in the fourth quarter of 2016 were cash-out refis, the highest level in eight years ...

As its footprint in the residential credit market expands, counterparties are looking to Annaly as a source of liquidity…

GSE originators have long complained that the rep-and-warrant policies need to be more transparent.

How much slack can the purchase market pick up? We’re about to find out…

Rep. Sherman of California noted: “Studies have shown that in some geographic areas, it is possible to determine the identity of nearly 100 percent of the borrowers using the data that lenders are required to collect and report by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.”

Deephaven is headed by former Goldman Sachs managing director Matt Nichols, who earlier this year predicted strong growth for the correspondent buyer of non-QM loans…

“Our ability to maintain or grow our servicing business may depend, in part, on our ability to acquire servicing rights from, and/or enter into subservicing contracts with, third parties,” the company said in an SEC filing.

Residential loan production picked up steam in March after a tepid January and February, while originators – both banks and nonbanks alike – kept a close eye on expenses in an effort to maintain positive cash flow. Bill Dallas, CEO and president of Skyline Home Loans, Calabasas, CA, said his company funded $650 million in the first quarter, a modest 5.8 percent decline from the same period a year ago. Roughly 75 percent of Skyline’s production was purchase loans, the exact opposite of what the company did in the year-ago quarter. “Over the past five months, since the election, the landscape has been...

Most lenders are usually shy when asked whether they would like to go public. But not Better Mortgage, a barely one-year-old “digital” mortgage lender that could triple loan production this year to $1.5 billion. “Yes, we’d like to go public,” company founder and CEO Vishal Garg told Inside MortgageFinance. “This company should be owned by the public.” As for when, that’s a different matter. The last time a nonbank mortgage lender sold...

As might be expected, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, did his best to pummel the CFPB and its Director Richard Cordray during a hearing Wednesday.