A top official of the Department of Housing and Urban Development said the agency is as concerned as Congress and the industry about mortgages seized through the power of eminent domain and will not refinance any mortgage taken in this manner. Testifying at a recent hearing before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance, Charles Coulter, deputy assistant secretary for housing, said FHA leadership is very much concerned about the idea of seizing troubled mortgages held in private-label securitizations under the power of ...

Through the first quarter of 2013, 1.1 million borrowers have received permanent HAMP modifications, well below the 3 million to 4 million the Obama administration projected when launching the program in 2009.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week finalized amendments to its ability-to-repay rule to revise how loan origination compensation is calculated for certain purposes. The agency also provided exemptions and modifications for small creditors, community development lenders and housing stabilization programs. The Dodd-Frank Act generally provides that points and fees on a qualified mortgages may not exceed 3 percent of the loan balance, and that points and fees in excess of 5 percent will trigger the protections for high-cost mortgages under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act. Dodd-Frank also included a provision requiring that loan originator compensation be counted toward these thresholds, even if it is not paid upfront by the consumer directly to the loan originator. The revised rule excludes...

The long-awaited boom in nonperforming loan sales may finally be here, as megabanks such as Wells Fargo, Citigroup and HSBC have begun testing investor appetites by offering large packages in the open market. According to investors and advisors who play in the space, Wells recently auctioned off an $800 million NPL package and HSBC sold a $750 million portfolio. Recently, Popular Bank said that it entered...

John Robbins is out at Bexil American Mortgage. Meanwhile, EverBank readies its second jumbo MBS deal of the year.

Banks and thrifts reported $7.7 billion in mortgage banking income during the first three months of 2013, a 16 percent jump from the previous quarter.

The auction market for nonperforming mortgages is beginning to generate heat with prices rising nicely from last year.

Come next year, Freddie Mac will assess lenders a fee of $7,500 if they fail to deliver mortgage loans with an aggregate principal balance of more than $5 million.

Nonbank servicers had an average of 275 loans per employee in the second half of 2012, according to Fitch, about the same level seen since 2010.

New bulk MSR packages continue to hit the market. Many of the new deals have low coupons and hardly any delinquencies.