Although some mortgage originators might brag – or even advertise – that they can close a loan in under 30 days, it’s not likely to happen, at least not in practice. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Trends over the past two weeks, a variety of factors can derail a closing – including many circumstances that an originator just cannot control. Such circumstances can include insufficient funds on the part of the borrower, scheduling mix-ups ...

While reform of the nation’s housing system and the government-sponsored enterprises languishes on Capitol Hill, three important GSE risk-sharing innovations could revolutionize housing finance independent of Congressional action, according to experts at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have guaranteed at least half of all new mortgage originations for the past eight years. The two GSEs’ critical role ...

When dealing with celebrity clients – TV and film stars in particular – mortgage loan officers rarely interact directly with the star talent over the loan details. Instead, they deal with a celebrity’s business manager or another intermediary, according to Barry Habib, CEO at MBS Highway and a well-known mortgage trainer and motivational speaker. Habib should know – besides being a mortgage professional, he’s also an actor and producer, whose credits include ...

Lenders continue to have a great deal of anxiety about TRID, including enforcement concerns and massive closing delays.

Trading in non-agency MBS, by comparison, is almost non-existent with June's volume coming in at just $2.9 billion.

CFPB chief Richard Cordray promised: "If we see errors, we’ll point out what they are and how they should be corrected. We will not be looking to be punitive toward people.”

Despite shrinking housing receivables, Citigroup marked up the asset value of its MSR contracts to $1.924 billion, a 14 percent improvement from the end of the first quarter.

For mortgage companies that were hoping to go public this year, they might as well forget about it. As one industry analyst put it: “The IPO market isn’t even on life support. It’s just plain dead.” Although many privately held mortgage firms are enjoying a strong year in both lending and profitability, the initial public offering market is dormant for three reasons: Nationstar Mortgage, Ocwen Financial and Walter Investment Management Corp. This year, the once “big three” nonbanks have paid...

Originations to first-time homebuyers perform worse than originations for repeat buyers, with the differences tied to factors beyond solely whether the borrower is a first-time homebuyer, according to new research from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In a working paper published late last week, Saty Patrabansh, a senior economist at the FHFA, determined that the difference in performance between the first-time homebuyers and repeat buyers can be attributed to differences in the distributional make-up of the two groups and not to the premise that first-time homebuyers are an inherently riskier group. He analyzed...

The mortgage division is housed in BofA’s consumer banking division, which employed 65,818 workers at the end of June.