The Federal Housing Finance Agency is keeping a close eye on large-scale servicing transfers because it is concerned about capacity issues that might arise from smaller players taking down portfolios that significantly increase their overall processing volume. According to industry advisors and servicing executives familiar with the issue, FHFA played a key role in Bank of America’s recent sale of $306 billion of mortgage servicing rights to Nationstar Mortgage and Walter Investment Management Corp. One source familiar with the deal said FHFA asked that Nationstar not take down the entire portfolio and that it be broken up into more than one piece. A spokeswoman for FHFA declined to comment on the matter to Inside The GSEs.

Bruce Witherell, a former top executive of Freddie Mac, has emerged as a key player in the new mortgage investing real estate investment trust being launched by Cerberus. Witherell, who was a chief operating officer at Freddie from 2009 to 2011, is chairman of Cerberus Mortgage Capital, a real estate investment trust that hopes to raise at least $150 million through an initial public offering. At Freddie, Witherell was in charge of day-to-day operations of three lines of business: single-family, multifamily and capital markets.

Roughly $20 billion of mortgage servicing rights that once belonged to Taylor, Bean & Whitaker are quietly being shopped around.

Three senators are pushing for 3 percent downpayment language on the QRM rule.

PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. may be out of the mortgage insurance business, but its surviving MI subsidiary, CMG Mortgage Insurance Co., will continue providing MI to credit unions under new management beginning in 2014. Last week, Arch Capital Group, a Bermuda-based provider of insurance and reinsurance, announced an agreement to acquire CMG MI from PMI Mortgage Insurance, as well as the latter’s operating platform and related assets. PMI is currently in rehabilitation and has been under the receivership of the Arizona Department of Insurance since 2011 after failing to meet statutory capital requirements. The transaction will not only allow...

Ever since Taylor Bean & Whitaker went down in flames a few years ago, the market for loans backed by mortgage servicing rights has been dormant with the nation’s largest banks pulling out of the business and vowing never to return. But now that MSRs are considered a “hot” investment with nonbanks such as Nationstar Mortgage, Ocwen Financial and Walter Investment Management gobbling up billions of dollars in receivables the past few years – and at bargain basement prices – banks, Wall Street firms, and other players are eyeing the market for a major comeback. According to servicing advisors and warehouse firms, there are...

President Obama, during his State of the Union address, urged Congress to get the HARP 3.0 refinancing program off the ground.

Fannie Mae is working on a plan to sell billions of dollars of nonperforming loans in the second quarter.

Officially, the GSE net-worth minimum is set at $2.5 million, but some in the industry think it will double eventually.