Pacific Union Financial took in $100 million of profits. It’s not every day that a privately held nonbank tells the world what it’s earning…

With certain exceptions, credit unions invest almost exclusively in agency product, avoiding jumbo securities.

The investor-plaintiffs claim that Fannie and two of the company’s former executives made false and misleading statements about the mortgage giant’s internal controls and its exposure to subprime.

Industry consultant Joe Garrett notes that one of his clients (back in 2003) had 52 loan officers and “about 52 comp plans”…

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae have been around for decades and they dominate the residential MBS market, but the agencies are not standing still. Pushed by their federal conservator, Fannie and Freddie are rebuilding their securitization infrastructure and trying to reinvent how they do business with mortgage sellers. At the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association this week, the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced an agreement in principle on changes to the representations-and-warranties framework used by the government-sponsored enterprises. Ginnie officials disclosed new issuer eligibility standards and performance evaluations. “GSE reform does not mean...

The Federal Reserve’s decision late last year to taper its agency MBS purchases appears to have contributed to higher mortgage rates, which in turn has helped lead to “significant reductions” in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guaranty fee revenue on MBS issued so far this year, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Inspector General. The evaluation report issued by the IG late this week concluded that continued tapering by the Fed and the eventual reduction of its massive MBS portfolio could have an “adverse impact” upon the financial performance of the two government-sponsored enterprises. “Although the Federal Reserve’s [quantitative easing] programs benefitted the enterprises’ financial condition in 2012 and 2013, its decision, among other factors, in late 2013 to taper its MBS purchases contributed...

Note to Ocwen management: every US employee is a potential mortgage customer. Think about it.

The mortgage credit box contracted quickly as the housing market slid toward disaster in 2007, but it’s proving to be much more difficult to stretch it back to what used to be considered normal. The subtitle to this week’s annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association could well have been “access to credit,” an idea that clearly dominated the conversation. Despite the recent unexpected drop in mortgage interest rates, most observers expect origination volume in 2015 to track closely to this year’s sluggish level and part of the problem is relatively weak home-purchase lending. Industry people are...

According to the most recently available data, 33 IG offices had roughly 3,500 agents authorized to carry firearms.

David Steckel of Bank of America said his institution has focused on capturing more of the customers who fit into the company’s credit box rather than making that box bigger.