Two weeks ago, specialty servicer Wingspan Portfolio Services shuttered its Melbourne, FL, office, leaving 150 servicing workers without a job. But more bad news may be on the way for the once fast-growing “contract” servicer. According to industry officials close to the company, the privately held Wingspan is in need of new contracts – badly. …

Guaranty fees as a whole have more than doubled since 2009, from 22 basis points to a record high of 58 bps in 2014, said the Federal Housing Finance Agency in a report released this week analyzing the fees. The 58 bps includes 15 bps of upfront loan-level pricing adjustments and 43 bps as part of an “ongoing fee.”Fees also jumped year-over-year as they were at 51 basis points in 2013. Two FHFA-directed increases in 2012 are the primary drivers for the sizeable increase from 2011, when the average fee was 26 bps, then rose in 2014. Higher fees have been met with strong resistance from originators...

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has joined a growing number of entities urging the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and certain major banks to stop selling distressed and nonperforming mortgages to Wall Street investors. Rather than sell pools of NPLs to private-equity firms, hedge funds and other speculators, sell them to qualified nonprofits for the purpose of saving homes from foreclosure and creating affordable housing, the group stated in a resolution co-sponsored by 17 mayors. The mayors point to a joint study issued recently by the Center for Popular Democracy and the ACCE Institute. The study said most NPL pools are auctioned off at steep discounts to hedge funds and private-equity firms. “Although Fannie and Freddie have been unwilling to offer principal reduction to struggling homeowners, they often offer steep discounts when they ...

The report from Potomac Partners bears the good news about FHA...

As the holiday weekend approached, representatives from PIMCO's media department had not returned telephone calls and emails on the matter.

Wells Fargo was the top seller to Freddie Mac in 2Q with $12.6 billion, according to newly compiled figures from Inside Mortgage Finance, but BofA was a somewhat close second...

For most HELOCs, the OCC said the end-of-draw period means that monthly payments change from interest-only to amortizing...

A few years back, then FHFA Director Ed DeMarco cut the compensation of the CEOs as a response to lawmaker concerns.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also is reviewing LPMI, but from a different angle: RESPA and the "discounting" of such policies…

Capital requirements and standards proposed by state regulators for nonbank servicers appear to be unnecessary, according to trade groups representing servicers. State regulators issued the proposal in March, seeking to ensure that nonbanks conduct their servicing operations in a safe and sound manner and have strong consumer protections in place. “It is not clear that nonbank mortgage servicers require a prudential regulatory regime,” a group of 37 state ...