Independent mortgage bankers are leading all other lenders in providing mortgage loans to first-time homebuyers, minorities, lower-income borrowers and rural areas, and yet they are more regulated than banks, according to a new industry report. The report from the Community Home Lenders Association underscores the fact that IMBs are small businesses that don’t have access to federally insured deposits. It claims that IMBs have done a better job of servicing home loans ...

The latest mortgage lender sentiment survey from Fannie Mae finds that industry leaders are paying increasing attention to enhancing the borrower experience, thanks to competitive market pressures. To what degree they can actually pull that off remains to be seen. Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist for the government-sponsored enterprise, noted in an online post that the company’s previous survey found that senior mortgage executives were worried ...

Changing demographics will be the private mortgage insurance industry’s most powerful growth engine over the next 20 years, predicts an industry report published by the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. The new report cited U.S. census data showing a 10 percent increase in the share of minority households in U.S. homeownership over the last two decades. It forecasts the share will increase to 38 percent by 2030. Demographic shifts, growth of minority households ...

Publicly traded companies generally reported improved earnings on the production side of their mortgage banking activities during the second quarter of 2017 but slumping income from servicing. A group of 12 lenders that includes most of the top players in the industry reported a combined $1.16 billion in production-related income during the second quarter, up 6.9 percent from the first three months of the year. Combined origination volume was up ... [Includes one data chart]

Purchase loans accounted for 67.5 percent of the estimated $455.0 billion in first-lien mortgage originations during the April-June cycle...

The increase in delinquencies was driven by loans going late in 30-60 day category…

In late August, a notice appeared on the website of the Federal Trade Commission under the banner of the agency’s “pre-merger notification program,” identifying Wells as the winning bidder…

Warehouse providers of credit ended the second quarter of 2017 with $64.0 billion of commitments on their books, a modest 8.5 percent sequential gain, reflecting a strong – but not an overheated – origination market for nonbank originators. Compared to the same quarter a year ago, commitments increased 12.3 percent. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance this week, credit managers are...[Includes one data table]

A proposal by federal regulators to delay tougher capital requirements for mortgage servicing assets will have a “marginally positive impact” on banks subject to the proposal, according to banking regulators. Near the end of August, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. issued a proposed rule that would extend the current treatment on mortgage servicing rights and related assets, delaying tougher standards established by Basel III. The proposal would apply to banks that aren’t subject to the “advanced approaches” capital rules – generally banks with less than $250 billion in total assets. “For small banking organizations that have significant amounts of MSAs ... the proposal could...

Sounding like a candidate, the CFPB Director noted: “If we do not push back on the forces that press people down, we are allowing America’s promises to go unfulfilled.”