John Shrewsberry, a senior vice president at Wells Fargo, said the bank has focused on adding jumbo mortgages to its portfolio. “They are very safe loans,” he said. “I think we’ve got four basis points of loss coming through that portfolio.”

HUD’s Single Family Policy Handbook authorizes lenders to order testing or remediation to ensure that the property’s public-water supply has acceptable levels of contaminants.

One executive who’s involved with the working group said the new guidance from the due diligence firms will help the rating agencies identify "material" risk...

When the nonbank first unveiled the stock buy-back program, its shares were trading at $8.61.

Good news for mortgage bankers: gain-on-sale profit margins are on the rise.

The supply of outstanding ABS itself fell slightly in the fourth quarter, down 2.3 percent to $704.91 billion...

Matthew Tomiak, a managing director at Redwood Trust, said investors occasionally request that Redwood issue publicly-registered jumbo MBS.

Neil Ahuja, CEO of Premium Point, said the firm is keeping its options open.

With the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau declining to provide any more formal guidance on legal liability for secondary market players when originators make errors in TRID mortgage disclosures, a group of due diligence firms is moving ahead with their own clarifications. High-level sources familiar with the matter, and who spoke to Inside MBS & ABS under the condition of anonymity, said the forthcoming clarifications have been vetted by legal counsel and are almost ready for viewing. Several top third-party review/due diligence firms are involved in the effort, including Clayton Holdings and Opus. All the major rating agencies are involved as well. “We’re working to calibrate our methodology, to bring it in line with the spirit of the CFPB letter,” said ...

Mortgage M&A historians might recall that last decade, before the financial crisis struck, Countrywide Financial Corp. was in serious talks to buy PHH’s mortgage business...