bivey@imfpubs.com Walter Investment Management is the latest servicer to transition to a “capital lite” business model, announcing the formation of a REIT to hold mortgage servicing rights. Walter said the new Walter Capital Opportunity unit will acquire certain MSRs while Walter Investment Management subservices the loans. Rival special servicers Nationstar Mortgage and Ocwen Financial have already created or partnered with similar affiliated MSR investors and Two Harbors Investment, a REIT, announced a like-minded agreement with PHH this…

Redwood started acquiring agency mortgages from correspondent lenders in mid-October. The REIT noted that the activity helps create mortgage servicing rights for it to invest in.

How many loans per month should a loan officer be closing when times are lean? According to Dave Lykken of Mortgage Banking Solutions, if an LO isn’t closing at least six loans per month, they might want to consider employment elsewhere.

The REIT is just starting to purchase MSRs. At the end of September it had $15.7 million of mortgage servicing rights on its balance sheet, but that figure should rapidly change in the quarters ahead.

The loans in the new Redwood deal have the strong characteristics associated with jumbos, including an average credit score of 766 and a combined loan-to-value ratio of almost 71 percent.

Standard & Poor's rated $11.65 billion of non-agency MBS issued through the end of September.

Is the White House ready to give up on Rep. Mel Watt, D-NC, to be the next director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency? Don’t bet on it.

Ocwen Financial posted record revenues in the third quarter of 2013 that could have been even higher if not for unexpected delays in boarding $42.0 billion in unpaid principal balance on non-agency mortgages from OneWest Bank. Officials at Ocwen wouldn’t reveal the exact cause of the delay. The loans were in non-agency mortgage-backed securities issued by IndyMac, which was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 2008 and sold by the FDIC to OneWest in 2009. Ocwen officials said delays ...

Big banks were the five largest jumbo originators last year, with Bank of America ranking second followed by JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and U.S. Bank.

The jumbo MBS market is frozen because investors in the AAA tranches are scarce and still lack confidence in the product following the housing bust and the ensuing tidal wave of litigation swamping issuers and underwriters. According to MBS pioneer Lewis Ranieri, there’s only one to fix the problem: give investors more information on the deals. At a speech this week during the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association, Ranieri, the chairman and CEO of Shellpoint Partners, noted...