The nation’s largest banks revealed better-than-expected residential origination figures (for some) and mouth-watering markups on the value of their servicing portfolios. That’s the good news. But it wasn’t all wine and roses. On the servicing front, BOK Financial revealed that fourth quarter income was reduced by $17.4 million because it left servicing-related hedges on the books for too long, betting that rates would stay low for an extended period of time. PNC Bank saw...[Includes one data table]

Nonbank servicers have a particularly big footprint in the Ginnie market, accounting for 53.6 percent of servicing outstanding at Dec. 31…

Late last year, RPM made what it called an “investment” in American Eagle Mortgage of Ohio…

BB&T saw residential loan production decline in the fourth quarter while its servicing portfolio fell by less than 1 percent.

The number of “sold” homes failing to seal the deal come closing time is growing. A new report from Trulia shows that the “sales fail” rate has jumped from 2.1 percent in 2015 to 3.9 percent in 2016. Trulia noted that there was an even bigger jump in incomplete sales in the past two years. Of all listed properties in the fourth quarter of 2014, only 1.4 percent did not reach the closing table. But in the fourth quarter of 2016, the number of failed sales catapulted to 4.3 percent. The reasons those sales are falling through the cracks range...

Wesley Winter, a senior modeler at Black Knight, said a traditional credit score may not be the best predictor of mortgage default.

Some M&A advisors believe 2017 could be a banner year for mortgage company sales. Then again, that’s what they predicted early last year...

Correspondent-originated mortgages accounted for 30.7 percent of home loans delivered into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities during the fourth quarter of 2016, according to a new analysis from Inside Mortgage Trends. Lenders sold $90.96 billion of correspondent-originated loans to the two government-sponsored enterprises, an 11.6 percent increase over the third quarter. The volume of retail originations rose 3.6 percent in the fourth quarter ... [Includes two data charts]

In general, nonbanks have been gaining origination market share from depositories over the past few years, a trend that shows no sign of abating.

The Blackstone Group this month filed its long awaited initial public offering document on its Invitation Homes unit, a pioneer in single-family rentals and securitization of these assets. The 1,300 page Form S-11 is chock full of financial details on the real estate investment trust, including the revelation that the company continues to lose money. Through the first nine months of 2016 – the latest available data – Invitation Homes posted a net loss of $51.6 million compared to a $121.7 million loss in the same period a year earlier. The numbers and commentary in the filing indicate...