Besides Quicken, loanDepot has been mentioned as an innovator when it comes to new using new technologies...

Loan brokers were slightly more purchase-focused than retail lenders...

The NPLs that Freddie Mac wants to sell currently are being serviced by Nationstar Mortgage.

As the Home Affordable Refinance Program ushers in its last year, the Federal Housing Finance Agency has charged Fannie and Freddie with developing an alternative to the popular refinance program created in 2009 to help underwater borrowers. Originally set to end in December 2013, the HARP program has been extended twice and will be put to rest on Dec. 31, 2016. At that time, the FHFA said the GSEs should have a high loan-to-value ratio refinance program in place and ready to kick off in January 2017. The FHFA’s 2016 scorecard for the GSEs directed Fannie and Freddie to “finalize post-crisis loss mitigation options for borrowers, including loan modifications, and develop an implementation plan and timeline.”

The Ginnie Mae market was the most active of the three, with an estimated $112.6 billion in MSR sales through the first 11 months of 2015.

The average daily trading volume for agency MBS fell to a yearly low of $149.2 billion in December, as trading desks from coast to coast continued to assess how to make money in what’s become a business of tight profit margins. Late this week, Barclays Bank unveiled a massive restructuring of its MBS and whole-loan trading business, cutting the number of employees in the division – including traders – down to 50 from roughly 100. As a structural matter, the bank is moving...

MBS backed by multifamily mortgage loans would be exempt from a proposed rule that would establish margining requirements for multifamily agency finance. Had it been implemented as originally proposed, the rule would have amended the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s Rule 4210 to establish margin requirements in the single-family “to-be-announced” (TBA) market. At the same time, it would have also scoped in the multifamily housing programs of Fannie Mae and FHA/Ginnie Mae, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. FINRA filed...

There is also a school of thought that going forward, loan officers won’t be needed as much because of new origination technologies...

Redwood Trust, which a few years back branched out into buying GSE loans, announced this week that it was throwing in the towel on that business, cutting 25 percent of its workforce in the process.Although it will no longer buy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages from correspondent originators, it will remain a buyer of jumbo product. As one source close to the company noted: Redwood “just couldn’t make the math work” in that line of business. At Sept. 30, the publicly traded real estate investment trust employed 221 full-time workers. The layoff will claim roughly 54 jobs, most of them in Denver where its GSE acquisition initiative was based.

Trade groups concerned about privacy violations in the proposed collection of data in the National Survey of Existing Mortgage Borrowers voiced their concerns to the Federal Housing Finance Agency last week. The FHFA has been seeking comments on the proposed voluntary survey of borrowers who have a first mortgage loan secured by a single-family home. Everything from the borrower’s name and address to financial records, mortgage and credit card information and race and household composition will be addressed in the approximately 80-question survey. While the 10 trade groups, including the American Bankers Association, Housing Policy Council, Independent Bankers of America and Mortgage Bankers Association, agree with...