Refinance mortgages accounted for 80.1 percent of agency production back in 2012, but that declined to 65.6 percent last year and just 45.3 percent of fourth-quarter business.

Radian's Loan Amount Estimator enables lenders that are capping their debt-to-income ratios at 43 percent to calculate maximum loan amounts and sale prices based on the MI product selected.

Inside Mortgage Finance recently revised its product mix estimates to reflect a larger volume of home-equity loans originated during the first nine months of 2013. We also made...[Includes one data chart]

The nation’s three largest funders of home mortgages – Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America – this week reported hefty declines in originations during the fourth quarter of 2013. Wells originated $50 billion in residential mortgages during the fourth quarter, a stunning 60 percent decline from the same period a year earlier. The last time this perennial market leader had fundings this low was in the fourth quarter of 2008 when financial markets were reeling worldwide and the U.S. housing market was in the throes of an historic collapse. But Wells’ closest competitors fared...[Includes one data chart]

The housing market is in the midst of a bubble or a gradual recovery, depending on who you ask. Analysts on either side of the debate point to the agency dominance of the mortgage market as one of the factors driving up home prices. Peter Wallison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, warned last week that the housing market is in the middle of another bubble. “Housing bubbles become visible – and can legitimately be called bubbles – when housing prices diverge significantly from rents,” he wrote in an op-ed published in the New York Times. Wallison pointed...

Private mortgage insurers have launched a number of initiatives to help lenders comply with the qualified-mortgage rule that took effect Jan. 10. The rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau puts new emphasis on capping debt-to-income ratios at 43 percent – except for agency mortgages – and limiting points and fees to 3 percent. Radian has announced 45-minute webinars discussing how QM impacts mortgage insurance as well as new, lower pricing for borrower-paid MI. The firm’s Loan Amount Estimator enables lenders that are capping their debt-to-income ratios at 43 percent to calculate maximum loan amounts and sale prices based on the MI product selected. In addition, the tool can be used for non-MI loans and is available through the MI’s rate finder application, Radian Rates. United Guaranty’s QMI product allows...

A lot of prospective homebuyers may be shut out of the market if their mortgage financing can’t pass muster with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s qualified-mortgage standard, congressional testimony this week suggested. Witnesses from The Peoples Bank Company, of Coldwater, OH, and Quicken Loans said during a House Financial Services Financial Institutions Subcommittee hearing this week that their firms plan to stay away from making mortgages that don’t fit into either the safe harbor or the rebuttable-presumption QM boxes. “There is...

Now that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has delivered its integrated mortgage disclosure project, the agency is asking consumers to identify the key “pain points” associated with closing and how they might by mitigated by market innovations and technology. “The CFPB seeks to encourage the development of a more streamlined, efficient and educational closing process as the mortgage industry increases its usage of technology, electronic signatures and paperless processes,” the bureau said in a recent notice. The plan is to “encourage interventions that increase consumer knowledge, understanding and confidence at closing,” the agency said. Specifically, comment is sought...

According to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, Flagstar is the nation’s second largest wholesale/broker lender. It also has a fairly large presence in the warehouse market.

Citigroup marked up the asset value of its MSRs by 5 percent, on a sequential basis, to $2.718 billion. Compared to 4Q12, its MSRs are now worth 40 percent more - even though its overall portfolio has been shrinking in size.