According to the bank’s fourth quarter earnings statement, 68 percent of its originations were refis – the mirror image of Wells Fargo, which had 68 percent of its production in purchase-money loans.

As expected, the Mortgage Bankers Association this week lowered its 2014 origination forecast to $1.12 trillion, a $57 billion decrease from its previous estimate. Word of the reduction was making the rounds last week.

The MBA suggested the CFPB increase the "rebuttable presumption" threshold from 150 basis points above the average prime offer rate to 250 basis points so more borrowers with less-than-perfect credit can benefit.

Waiting for a revival in jumbo MBS issuance is like waiting for Godot.

On a sequential basis, the origination results look slightly better: a 38 percent decline compared to the third quarter of 2013 for Wells and a 42 percent downdraft for JPM. Both have laid off thousands of mortgage workers over the few quarters.

We continue to hear reports that Walter Investment Management is talking to a fairly large nonbank about a possible acquisition.

However, the greatest earnings impact could fall on such mid-sized mortgage firms as PHH Corp., Redwood Trust, and PennyMac Financial Services.

The megabanks no longer have a total "lock" on the MBS issuance market. But is this trend short-lived?

Commercial banks and savings institutions coughed up $1.998 billion in mortgage repurchases and indemnifications during the third quarter of 2013, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. It was the lowest quarterly repurchase total for the industry since the third quarter of 2008, when the buyback storm was just beginning to gather force. The third quarter 2013 total also reflected a 25.2 percent drop from the second quarter. For the first nine months of 2013 ... [Includes one data chart]

The tendency of borrowers with low credit scores to choose adjustable-rate mortgages over fixed-rate loans is more about economic considerations rather than a lack of financial sophistication, according to a study by Federal Reserve researchers. In the study, Fred Furlong, David Lang and Yelena Takhtamanova looked at factors that influenced lower-credit borrowers to select ARMs over fixed-rate mortgages during the housing boom in early 2000. In general, the research team observed ...