The Department of Housing and Urban Development warned of tougher enforcement against servicers who do not make full use of HUD’s loss mitigation tools, as it announced the implementation of a newly revised tiered servicer ranking system. The new system, Tiered Ranking System II, features a new scoring mechanism that would help HUD determine which lenders get higher reimbursement rates on claim expenses based on their servicing performance.

During the next 12 months, investors will have to navigate through numerous uncertainties, including all forms of policy risk: monetary, fiscal, economic and the fate of the GSEs.

While banks have put an emphasis on originating jumbo mortgages for portfolio, the uptick in total mortgages outstanding was largely driven by originations of agency mortgages.

Freedom has big expansion plans for the new year. Company CEO and founder Stan Middleman recently told IMFnews Daily that he plans to hire between 200 and 500 residential loan officers in 2014.

A few months ago, sources close to the BofA case, said the FHFA was hoping for a settlement in the range of $13 billion.

Will well-known mortgage trainer Barry Habib stick with Residential Finance Corp., a company whose assets are in the process of being sold? It’s hard to say since RFC isn’t answering questions on about the firm’s future.

Ratings on servicer advance asset-backed securities issued by Home Loan Servicing Solutions and Nationstar Mortgage could be downgraded due to a change in rating criteria by Standard & Poor’s that was implemented after the ABS were issued.

The new requirements become effective for FHA case numbers assigned on or after March 11, 2014. Comments are due by Feb. 10, 2014.

At September 30, Flagstar had capitalized the MSRs on its balance sheet at 107 basis points.

Ginnie Mae chief Ted Tozer noted: “We want aggressive outreach to find out what the issues are. If they aren’t issuing, we want to know why."