Bank of America is once again testing the MSR sales market, but few investment bankers believe it will unload any massive packages this year.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s new “servicing project” will take a close look at how large-scale packages of mortgage-servicing rights are sold and transferred, but will also delve into what mortgage bankers thought was a dead issue: minimum servicing fees paid to processors. “You might say that FHFA is tackling the whole servicing arena in a big way,” said one mortgage consultant who has been briefed on the agency’s plans. The regulator’s sudden interest in transfers comes...

Increased compliance costs in recent years have done little to dampen demand for mortgage servicing rights, according to industry analysts. “The amount of capital has far outstripped the available supply,” said Dashiell Robinson, a managing director at Wells Fargo Securities, during last week’s ABS Vegas conference sponsored by the Structured Finance Industry Group and Information Management Network. William Roehrenbeck, chairman and CEO of Arvest Mortgage Company, said...

It’s been several years since a top-10 ranked lender changed hands, but it could happen this year with speculation falling on PHH Mortgage and Flagstar Bancorp. Both firms own large servicing portfolios but have sold servicing “strips” while retaining a subservicing relationship with the consumer. Investment banking sources and competitors familiar with the two say a sale of either is...

Ocwen Financial will slow its acquisition of mortgage servicing rights this year. Does this portend a huge drop in deals? Don’t bet on it.

One of the complications of the federal government’s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been the injection of uncertainty over whether the two government-sponsored enterprises can foreclose by advertisement due to Uncle Sam’s control of the companies. That has bred some novel legal arguments against the GSEs’ ability in this regard, but they have met with mixed results thus far. “Over the past several months, one of the newer arguments challenging foreclosure by borrowers is...

In a new research report, WFS reduced its estimate for bulk transfers to Ocwen in 2014 to $140 billion from $200 billion.

In supplemental materials to his speech, President Obama referenced the GSEs' “failed business model,” adding that taxpayers should never again be “on the hook for bad loans and bailouts.”

Industry consultant Joe Garrett is telling clients that, “We’ve heard of at least one company that uses a fake rate sheet when recruiting loan officers. As you can guess, it shows really great rates, all fake, of course.”

The fast growing nonbank servicer/lender also disclosed a preliminary fourth quarter profit in the range of $101 million to $106 million, a 50 percent jump from the prior period.