Among other things, Icahn mentions a "changing and potentially punitive regulatory framework..."

Mortgage production ran into a seasonal buzz-kill and stiffer headwinds from interest rates during the third quarter of 2015, leading to a modest decline in volume, according to a new InsideMortgage Finance market analysis and ranking. An estimated $455.0 billion of single-family first-lien mortgages were originated during the third quarter, down 7.1 percent from the second quarter of 2015. But on a year-to-date basis, total originations were up 42.9 percent from the first nine months of last year. In fact, at $1.350 trillion, production through the end of September had already topped last year’s $1.300 trillion. A lot of this year’s increase came...[Includes two data tables]

First Mortgage Corp., Ontario, CA, this month completed its liquidation, selling its branch network and $6 billion of servicing rights to other firms, and winding down a 44-year-old business that catered to FHA borrowers with lower credit scores. Jean Ziroli-Kobielsky, a recruiter for the family-owned business, noted that it wasn’t fear of regulatory oversight that prompted her father and brother to sell FMC, it was technology: “Some of our technology systems were still using DOS,” she told Inside Mortgage Finance. (DOS, or disk operating system, was the precursor to the Microsoft Windows software line for PCs.) She said...

The younger generation appears ready to take the plunge into the housing market, but finding an affordable home and gaining access to credit remain the top challenges, especially when it comes to African-Americans and Latinos, according to some experts. Mark Fleming, chief economist with First American, sponsor of a housing forum on Capitol Hill this week, said the way mortgage credit is formulated today doesn’t necessarily fit the type of ethnically diverse, millennial borrower of the future. “Ethnically diverse communities tend...

There was some good news from Ocwen: the company earned $44.2 million from servicing sales...

Of the 21,100 complaints submitted by consumers in the region, 27 percent have been related to mortgages.

The sale of mortgage servicing rights to Nationstar should transfer by Nov. 1.

In addition to alternative credit scoring models and low downpayment products, panelists suggested more public/private partnerships are needed to create affordable housing communities.

The privately held Guild Mortgage, San Diego, said it funded $10.7 billion in home mortgages through the first nine months of 2015...

The privately held Quicken Loans was also the biggest originator of government-insured loans, accounting for 5.7 percent of the sector.