Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt said access to credit and supporting underserved markets will be among the goals outlined for the GSEs next year. Although the FHFA will not release a 2017 GSE scorecard until yearend, Watt, speaking at this week’s annual Mortgage Bankers Association convention in Boston, offered a preview of what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will focus on in the coming year. Watt said he expects the GSEs to ramp up research efforts to increase responsible access to credit and affordable housing. He said the average credit scores for GSE purchase loans remain historically high. “Based on the work they have already done and this additional research, we’ll be asking them to...

The first-time homebuyer share of home purchases has declined significantly in recent months, according to the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. First-time homebuyers had a 34.8 percent share of purchases in September, based on a three-month moving average. That was the lowest share for first-time homebuyers since August 2014. The first-timer share has declined for four consecutive months, from 40.4 percent in May. Both current homeowners ...

Some leading mortgage technology vendors told the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau they are concerned about the resources that will be required to implement the changes the bureau wants to make to its integrated disclosure rule known as TRID. In a comment letter to the CFPB regarding its proposed rule to clarify a number of aspects of the TRID regulation, the Mortgage Vendor Regulatory Work Group raised concerns about software implementation resources, including ...

Nonbanks crossed a key threshold during 3Q16: Among the top 50 lenders, nonbanks accounted for 51.4 percent of 3Q originations – the first time these lenders grabbed more than half of the market…

“The opportunity for this group to qualify for mortgage loans is growing,” said Experian.

Ocwen funded $1.2 billion in “forward” mortgages and an additional $213 million of reverse loans. In 2Q16 it funded $1.32 billion.

HUD has eased condo requirements, effective immediately. Lenders and Realtors start your engines…

This past summer, Arch agreed to buy United Guaranty, the market leader in the MI space.

Ocwen had an average of 7,484 employees in the third quarter of 2016, down 12.3 percent from 3Q15...

The U.S. mortgage market produced an estimated $580.0 billion of first-lien originations during the third quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking. That was up 13.7 percent from the second quarter, and it marked the strongest origination cycle since the fourth quarter of 2012, when $584.0 billion of new loans flowed through the pipes. The robust third quarter brought year-to-date originations to $1.470 trillion, up 8.9 percent from the first nine months of 2015. Lender feedback and agency mortgage-backed securities data suggest...[Includes two data tables]