Among the top 20 VA lenders, just six depositories made the cut: USAA, Navy Federal, Wells Fargo, Flagstar Bank, The Federal Savings Bank and North American Savings Bank…

Most of the firms looking to buy other shops are nonbanks…

Morgan Stanley was offering a 5/1 IO ARM with an interest rate of 3.850 percent for loan amounts below $1 million…

Requirement for the program include: three years of mortgage experience, a statement on production goals, anticipated operational structure and a description of the company.

The task force consists of 20 MBA member companies, led by Alex McGillis of Quicken Loans and Erik Schmitt of JPMorgan Chase.

According to Treasury Department reports, overseas investors held $821.3 billion of Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie MBS at the end of June, a 5.0 percent increase from March.

More bad news on appraisals: the on-time closing share has declined for four consecutive months…

Tom Hutchens, SVP of sales and marketing at Angel Oak, said originations of nonprime non-QMs have predominantly been purchase mortgages. However, refinance activity is starting to increase…

The Department of Veterans Affairs is working on a change to its existing streamline refinancing policy to address a problem that is giving VA and Ginnie Mae the fits. Under the VA’s qualified-mortgage rule, a VA borrower must wait six months and show six months’ worth of mortgage payments before they can refinance into an IRRRL (Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan) and take advantage of the lower rate. However, it seems not all VA lenders are adhering to the rule and that a good number are refinancing veterans into IRRRLs even before the mandatory seasoning period ends for fear interest rates might rise and the borrower might not benefit from the lower rate. “I’ve redone the numbers in 20 different directions on how much a borrower would save if they had to wait two more months and the rate went up a quarter of a point because they lost those two months ...

Ginnie Mae continues to wrestle with issuers lacking liquidity and net worth although the number of such cases has gone down significantly, thanks to tight oversight, according to the agency’s top counterparty risk officer. Briefing participants at this year’s Ginnie Mae summit in Washington, DC, Zack Skochko, director of counterparty risk, reported that some issuers are still struggling to comply with Ginnie Mae’s liquidity and net worth requirements.A number of small issuers failed their liquidity and net worth audits this year by not maintaining the minimum $1 million cash or 10 basis points of outstanding Ginnie securities required to participate in the agency’s mortgage-backed securities program. Ginnie Mae also requires issuers to meet a minimum net worth of $2.5 million plus 35 bps of the issuer’s total effective single-family obligations The requirements were designed to ensure that the ...