“We are extremely concerned that, one year after the CFPB’s mortgage servicing rules went into effect, we are still finding runarounds and illegal dual-tracking,” said agency Director Richard Cordray.

Flagstar is losing its chief legal officer...

Apparently, the Blackstone Group recently closed on yet another mortgage company purchase...

A relatively small – even microscopic – percentage of loans securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the past three years have been subject to a repurchase demand, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis.

Fannie Mae is looking to reduce its footprint in the Dallas region as the number of mortgage delinquencies continues to decline. The GSE’s southwestern regional office at the International Plaza II includes more than 400,000 square feet of office space spread out among three buildings.

Credit quality has improved over the last two years, according to Chris Mock, vice president of single-family quality control for Freddie Mac, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. These days he said the top three common defects are missing documentation, insufficient funds to close, and insufficient income. “The first one is we are unable to calculate income and match it to the income the lender calculated on the loan file,” he said in an interview with Inside The GSEs. “And that one is mainly driven by documentation that is missing when the customer sends us a file.” Mock said that Freddie shares a list of the top 10 missing documents with lenders...

Redwood Trust is preparing to issue its second consecutive jumbo MBS that includes a new stop-advance feature. While officials at the real estate investment trust said the feature has been well received by AAA investors, Fitch Ratings warned late last week that it introduces some risks to deals. The stop-advance feature being used by Redwood prevents servicers from providing advances of principal and interest on loans that are 120+ days delinquent. The feature was first used on the $356.45 million deal Redwood issued in April and is set to be included in a pending $343.21 million jumbo MBS from the issuer. Fitch didn’t rate...

Ginnie Mae this week announced plans to reform its document-custody policies as part of a long-term effort to modernize the way it manages documents in order to minimize agency risks. Michael Drayne, Ginnie’s senior vice president of issuer and portfolio management, said the updates and improvements will apply to loan documents that serve as collateral for securitized pools of mortgages. Ginnie will follow...

The FOMC said it will increase rates when it sees further improvement in the labor market and inflation looks to be under control.

The outstanding supply of home mortgage debt – even what had been the fastest-growing sector of the market – ebbed in the first quarter of 2015. The Federal Reserve late last week reported the supply of home mortgage debt outstanding fell to $9.855 trillion as of the end of March. That was down 0.3 percent from December 2014 and reversed a modest expansion of the servicing market over the second half of last year. While banks, thrifts and credit unions managed...[Includes two data tables]