A California FHA lender could face monetary penalties totaling $242,828 for deficient mortgage underwriting and exposing the FHA insurance fund to increased risk of loss and fraud. A Department of Housing and Urban Development inspector general’s audit of Sun West Mortgage Co. of Cerritos, CA, also alleged unauthorized use of foreign staff in another country to “pre-underwrite” FHA loans. The audit was triggered by a complaint the IG Office received in November last year alleging that Sun West, an approved FHA lender since 1980, was not underwriting FHA loans properly. In addition, the complaint alleged that Sun West was having the loans pre-underwritten by a company in another country, in violation of HUD rules. Neither the company nor the country was identified in the audit report. The complaint further alleged that employees at Sun West shared user identification numbers for ...

-The average credit score for purchase mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae during the second quarter was 722.8, down a few points from the first quarter.

UI’s Laurie Goodman said borrowers who took out mortgages in the past five years are better at paying their mortgages than any other group of mortgage borrowers in history.

In the fourth quarter of last year, Walter/Ditech made a decision to exit the consumer retail channel, selling branches where possible and laying off staff.

Mortgage warehouse providers ended the second quarter with $55.0 billion of commitments on their books, a 10.0 percent sequential improvement in a red-hot origination market, according to survey figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance. Compared to the same period a year earlier, commitment volumes were up 12.2 percent. But the real story was in lines drawn and “average outstandings,” which rose substantially. At Southwest Bank, for example, its commitment level increased...[Includes one data table]

Home prices in the U.S. are continuing to rebound – in some cases, nearing their peak before the housing market’s collapse, and in other cases, exceeding their peak. The trending data are stoking anxiety among some market observers that the American housing and mortgage markets are either already in, or dangerously close to, bubble territory. For example, the latest Home Price Index from Black Knight Financial Services now stands at an average of $256,000, up 32.6 percent from the market’s bottom and just 1.1 percent away from a new national peak, based on June 2016 residential real estate transactions. That figure is up 5.3 percent from year-ago levels. Further, home prices in six of the nation’s 20 largest states in mortgage activity reached...

JPM, though, relies heavily on correspondent loan purchases to gather loans while Quicken bills itself as a direct-to-consumer/retail lender.

Kingstown is known as a value-oriented hedge fund, with roughly $1.5 billion of assets under management.

Only two of the top 10 banks as ranked by “servicing for others” have been in growth mode: PNC Bank and SunTrust.

Price is paramount to buyers purchasing a mortgage company, but equally important is bringing over the salesforce – namely loan officers – and making sure they stay happy under the new owners. That’s one of many insights contained in a new “In-Focus” report from The Stratmor Group, a consulting firm that plies its trade in the M&A circuit as well as other sectors of the industry. “While the numbers and related analysis are fundamental to the negotiating process, there is an ...