Purchase mortgages securitized by Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie in the first quarter of 2014 were down by 76.3 percent compared with the first quarter of 2013.

BofA's mortgage-related settlements led to a loss for the lender in the first quarter of 2014.

U.S. Bank's mortgage originations in the first quarter of 2014 declined by 71.2 percent compared with the first quarter of 2013.

The outage of Ellie Mae's Encompass systems at the end of the first quarter appears to be due to a malfunction on Ellie Mae's end, not a malicious attack.

Citi continued the trend of big banks reporting sharp declines in their mortgage originations, driven by a lack of refinance business.

The first three months of 2014 represented the strongest quarterly ABS issuance number since the third quarter of 2009, when $53.27 billion of new deals were issued. It was up a modest 1.7 percent from the strong start in 2013.

Bad news for Nationstar and Ocwen? S&P said downgrades on servicer-advance ABS are possible because the analysis that accompanied ratings on certain deals didn’t consider subordinated interest amounts as part of the ratable promise.

But Wells also offers up disappointing news on its mortgage gain-on-sale results. Its GOS fell to 161 basis points in the first quarter compared to 177 bps in 4Q and 256 bps in 1Q13.

In 2013, nine firms issued jumbo MBS. In the past two quarters, the only issuers of jumbo MBS were Credit Suisse, JPMorgan Chase and Redwood Trust.

Demand from borrowers for loans that aren’t “qualified mortgages” has prompted many banks to continue to offer non-QMs such as interest-only mortgages or non-agency mortgages with debt-to-income ratios above 43 percent. “We’ve pretty much made the decision that the risk of there being any kind of a kickback from an individual – if we underwrite that thing and document ourselves and do the things we need to do – is a risk worth taking,” said Derek Williams ...