Citadel’s small-balance commercial program will include mixed-use retail and other loan types.

Stearns said that temporary interest rate buy-downs are good for borrowers who expect their incomes to increase in the relatively near future.

Warehouse lenders ended the first quarter of 2017 with an estimated $59.0 billion of commitments on their books, a 4.8 percent sequential decline, according to exclusive survey figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance. Compared to a year ago, commitments were up 13.5 percent. However, many nonbanks sign commitment deals but don’t always draw on the lines very heavily. A case in point was the first quarter: the drop in commitments was benign compared to the overall decline in originations. Industrywide, residential lending fell by 33.6 percent from the fourth quarter. The good news for the warehouse sector is...[Includes one data table]

Servicing advisors Steve Harris and Mark Garland view the MSR market as improving…

PHH Mortgage continues to ooze losses as well…

The CFPB responded that “none of the identified opportunities for improvement ever resulted in any breach of confidential information outside the bureau.”

Mortgage originators and the government-sponsored enterprises in the first quarter of 2017 continued to distance themselves from the contentious sparring over repurchase demands related to loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to the housing market collapse. An exclusive Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of GSE repurchase disclosures shows a spike upward in total repurchases during the first quarter, but the move was linked to ... [Includes two data charts]

Publicly traded nonbank mortgage lenders and servicers reported weak earnings during the first quarter of 2017, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends summary. The nine nonbank lenders posted a combined profit of $116.69 million for the first three months of the year. That was down 79.4 percent from the fourth quarter, although it represented a huge improvement from the $509.68 million loss the group recorded in the first three months of 2016 ... [Includes one data chart]

Since its founding roughly five years ago, mortgage technology vendor Blend has landed five top-10 residential lenders for its digital origination platform and 20 customers overall. It also has raised $60 million in seed money from investors, but has no current plans to tap the private equity market for cash, which is probably a good sign. “We may raise more money, but not at the moment,” said company Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Nima Ghamsari. But is Blend profitable ...

As lenders increasingly turn to subservicers to handle various functions, up-front due diligence and ongoing monitoring are necessary to help increase originations and maximize return on investment, according to Kurt Blohm, a senior manager at Richey May & Co. Blohm is the leader of the consulting firm’s subservicer oversight review service and he recently authored a white paper on selection and oversight responsibilities for holders of mortgage servicing rights ...