“We’ve got approximately $72 million [of HARP refinance business that can be done] in this metropolitan area," said FHFA director Mel Watt about Chicago. "People won’t come in and say I want that money.”

New GSE repurchase requirements are now in effect, including the “MI stand-in” option, which Fannie defines as “the full mortgage insurance benefit that would have been payable under the original mortgage insurance policy if the mortgage loan liquidates.”

However, compared to the same quarter a year ago, loan production at Wells took it on the chin, falling a bloodcurdling 59 percent.

The agencies securitized $122 billion of purchase mortgages during the second quarter of this year, a 16.6 percent sequential increase.

At the very least, MI firms must have $400 million in capital, and $500 million if the company is start-up mortgage insurer.

We know of some veteran mortgage bankers who believe the “fix and flip” housing market is getting overheated. One lender told us he fears a severe correction could hit California…

Thanks to lousy origination profits posted over the past six months, mortgage bankers increasingly are boosting earnings through servicing-released arrangements, causing a mini-boom in flow transactions. “You might say we’re back to a normal operating environment where originations are cash-flow negative,” which is forcing lenders to book profits through MSR sales, said Jeff Levine, managing director of Houlihan Lokey, an investment banking firm. But Levine is...

Suddenly, REITs are entering into alliance deals regarding jumbo mortgages. Five Oaks Investment is the latest.

The Democratic proposal calls for private mortgage capital to backstop the first 5 percent of conventional-mortgage securitizations with the remaining 95 percent of risk shared “on a pari passu basis.”

According to a copy of the offering circular provided to IMFnews, Quicken accounts for 32.86 percent of the loans.