In the next year or so, a changing environment will remain the norm in the mortgage industry, where participants can expect impending interest-rate increases, new product offerings, increasing competition, new servicing business models, and continued regulatory scrutiny, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study. To address flat production volume and shrinking margins, lenders will need to cross-sell products, and concentrate on reducing ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac processed a huge increase in single-family business through their mortgage-backed securities platforms in July, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis and ranking.Total single-family MBS issuance hit $83.27 billion in July, a solid 9.3 percent increase from the June. It was the biggest monthly output for the two GSEs since August 2013, when they had a combined $98.83 billion in single-family MBS issuance. Most of the gain came from a 15.3 percent jump in purchase-mortgage business in July. But the flow of refinance loans also increased, by a more modest 3.6 percent, from the previous month.

Some industry reps say the omission of more guidance on cures will hurt the jumbo secondary market, where anxiety over assignee liability is high...

PennyMac is also a large subservicer with $52.0 billion worth of contracts on its books.

FHFA officials said the directive is not being made available to the public.

Overall, Fannie Mae’s bottom line was bolstered by a strong quarter for originations: $510 billion in the second quarter compared to $380 billion in the first, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

Looks like JPMorgan Chase is getting ready to issue yet another jumbo MBS...

Eight of the top 10 mortgage servicers reported declining portfolios during the second quarter of 2016, an unusual highlighting of long-term trends still underway in the market. The only top 10 lenders to actually increase their servicing portfolios during the second quarter were U.S. Bank Mortgage, fifth on the list of servicers, and Quicken Loans, number 10, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. It’s...[Includes one data table]

Mortgage industry trade groups filed a brief last week asking the Supreme Court of the United States to take up a case involving fees charged by Connecticut aimed at mortgage recordings by Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems. In February, Connecticut’s Supreme Court upheld fees imposed by the state in 2013 that tripled charges for mortgages recorded with MERS compared with non-MERS recording fees in the case of MERSCORP Holdings v. Dannel Malloy. In the new brief, industry participants caution...

Banks that participate in third-party lending, including mortgage originations, would be subject to greater scrutiny, according to proposed examination guidance issued late last week by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The FDIC said third-party lending is an arrangement that relies on a third party to perform a significant aspect of the origination process, including marketing, borrower solicitation, underwriting, loan pricing, loan origination, customer service, consumer disclosures, regulatory compliance, servicing, debt collection, and data collection, aggregation or reporting. An agency spokesperson said...