Freddie Mac benefited to the tune of $200 million (pre-tax) by reducing the write-down on its net deferred tax asset...

Freddie CEO Don Layton said the CRT deals are “amazingly efficient…”

Fun fact: Consumers with their names in the email address were 30 percent less likely to default than other customers.

But putting the negativity aside for a minute, there are a couple of bright spots in the industry: Servicing valuations and non-QM lending...

Fannie Mae recently introduced a new tool – the Loan Servicing Data Utility platform – to simplify investor reporting.

Transfers of agency mortgage servicing rights jumped significantly in the third quarter thanks largely to Citizens Bank’s acquisition of Franklin American Mortgage, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis. A total of $179.13 billion of MSR tied to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities changed ownership during the third quarter, a hefty 38.3 percent jump from the prior period. Most of the activity was in bulk servicing ... [Includes three data charts]

The nation’s major banks had a challenging third quarter as residential production declined at most of the larger shops while nimble-footed nonbanks outperformed, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest home lender and a bellwether for the industry, originated $45.2 billion in residential first liens during the third quarter, a 7.1 percent sequential decline. Its closest competitor, JPMorgan Chase, fared a bit better, funding $24.6 billion of ...

If anyone in the mortgage industry thought Ginnie Mae – and FHA for that matter – might take a kinder, gentler approach to the lenders it manages under the Trump administration, by now they are sorely disappointed. Over the past few weeks, Ginnie has suspended a mid-sized lender – 360 Mortgage Group – from its program and sent Executive Vice President Maren Kasper to the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association to relay the message that agency stress tests are ...

Specific details in consumers’ email addresses and insight into whether lower-case writing is consistently used can be just as useful for predicting defaults as credit scores, according to research published by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The findings suggest that financial technology companies could use data from so-called digital footprints to challenge traditional lending business models. The findings were detailed in a recent paper titled “On the Rise of the FinTechs – Credit ...

There’s been a significant increase in high debt-to-income lending, according to industry experts speaking on a panel highlighting trends in mortgage credit at the Mortgage Bankers Association conference in Washington, DC, last week. Stephen Mackey, executive vice president and chief risk officer at Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp., asked, “Are we setting up borrowers for success?” Home prices are soaring at twice the rate of income growth and both DTI and loan-to-value ratios ...