With the first quarter coming to a close, the mortgage mergers and acquisitions market shifted into high gear this week as Ocwen Financial stepped up its auction of agency servicing rights and new revelations surfaced that RoundPoint Mortgage was almost sold, but the deal hit a snag over pricing. According to investment banking officials familiar with the RoundPoint situation, a buyer backed away from the transaction because the servicer’s owner, Tavistock Group ...

Lenders make adjustments to staffing levels based on demand for purchase mortgages while demand for refinances spur little increase in mortgage employment levels, according to new research from staff at the Federal Reserve. Steve Sharpe, an economist at the Fed, and Shane Sherlund, an assistant director at the Fed, said mortgage processing capacity constraints caused by refi booms reduce originations to borrowers with low to modest credit scores ...

As loan quality improves, it endangers the job prospects for "high-touch" servicing specialists.

Eric Rosenzweig, principal at Stone Point Capital, sees many business plans from people who want to get into the non-qualified-mortgage space.

Home Loan Servicing Solutions, which is slated for sale to New Residential Investment Corp., said it has received notice from the NASDAQ that it is no longer in compliance with the exchange's listing requirements, which means it could eventually be removed from the trading board.

Urban Institute's Karan Kaul noted that some banks have opted to keep mortgages that are eligible for sale to the GSEs.

Loan Modification Trial Payment Plans for Forward Mortgages. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced requirements for trial plan duration, required signatures, and reporting for trial payment-plan agreements, and the conditions under which FHA deems a TPP to have failed.Lenders must implement the requirements in Mortgagee Letter 2015-07 for all TPPs offered to borrowers on or after June 1, 2015. FHA Publishes Additional Sections of HUD Single-Family Policy Handbook. The FHA has published additional sections for the SF Handbook, including the following: Doing Business with FHA – Lenders and Mortgagees Doing Business with FHA – Other participants in FHA Transactions – Appraisers; Quality Control, Oversight and Compliance – Lenders and Mortgagees; Quality Control Oversight, and Compliance – Other Participants in FHA Transactions – Appraisers ...

MBS investors – so far – are losing little sleep over the effect plunging oil prices might have on the market, even though delinquency rates in Texas are beginning to creep up. In some quarters of the industry, the fear is that a major (and further) correction in the energy sector will lead to massive layoffs in states dependent on oil, and that mortgagors, in time, will go delinquent on their loans. In turn, MBS and servicing rights that have a heavy concentration in ...

Bank and thrift portfolio holdings of first-lien mortgages increased in 2014, according to an Inside Nonconforming Markets analysis of call reports. Retention of new jumbo mortgages and even some conforming loans helped outpace portfolio runoff. Banks and thrifts held a total of $1.77 trillion in first-lien mortgages at the end of the fourth quarter of 2014. The holdings increased by 0.3 percent compared with the previous quarter and were up ... [Includes one data chart]

Originations of adjustable-rate mortgages were nearly level in 2014 compared with the previous year, according to a new ranking by Inside Nonconforming Markets. The ARM share of total originations increased because mortgage production overall was down in that time, though some big banks that dominate ARM originations also slowed their production. An estimated $198.0 billion in ARMs were originated in 2014, up 1.0 percent ... [Includes one data chart]