Consultant Joe Garrett notes: “It’s a very small club of mortgage bankers who’ve bought banks…”

With the purchase now complete, there are just six MI firms in the U.S.

When the housing recession was in its early years, negative equity was most pronounced in a handful of Southwestern and Southeastern markets...

With rates rising (and staying that way, for now) mortgage M&A is expected to pick up steam in the coming months...

But if you think that Wells Fargo will pull a “BofA” and quietly downshift its presence in mortgages, think again.

In the third quarter, the top FHA rehab were Prospect Mortgage, Movement Mortgage and Wells Fargo.

The index estimates the level of defects detected in loan applications processed by the First American FraudGuard system.

DOJ notes that although the lender’s internal quality control reviews “showed severe problems with FHA insured mortgages, USFS routinely failed to provide any meaningful information to senior management…”

The new MBS is backed by 4,274 mortgages that have seasoned for an average of 10.6 years.

Tim Howard, a former Fannie Mae CFO, called Mnuchin’s comments “a welcome reset…”