Ethos Lending, a QM and non-QM lender, is marketing itself to third-party loan officers as the “broker advocate."

Wingspan is a specialty servicer, a space that is looking increasingly crowded these days.

IMT also found that in 3Q, seven of the top 15 sellers to Fannie and Freddie were nonbanks.

For those lenders originating HELOCs, they will have more failed loans on their hands – that is, if the theory is proved true.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency can and should improve its oversight of Freddie Mac information technology investments, concluded a new audit by the agency’s official watchdog. Last week’s Inspector General audit noted that Freddie is making “substantial investments” in IT in order to better support its operations and reduce risk. The GSE’s planned IT expenditures over three years are expected to exceed $1 billion, the IG added.

Fannie Mae last week announced two significant executive staffing changes. Leslie Peeler, senior vice president in charge of Fannie Mae’s National Servicing Organization, is leaving the GSE for a senior position with IBM’s mortgage group. It’s unclear what exactly Peeler will do for the mortgage division of IBM, which includes Seterus, a subservicer that works for Fannie Mae. IBM rarely discloses any information about its mortgage division.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw significant increases in single-family mortgage business during the third quarter of 2014, and they relied less on their top sellers, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis. Together, the two government-sponsored enterprises issued $183.2 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the third quarter. That was up 29.1 percent from the previous quarter. Most of the gain came from a 31.7 percent jump in ... [Includes two data charts]

Between now and yearend, it should be a seller’s market for mortgage servicing rights, as long as the seller isn’t trying to unload legacy or “high-touch” product. Legacy deals – at least large ones – continue to be a non-entity in the market as buyers are focusing on smaller MSR packages tied to relatively new originations. One recent legacy deal that was scuttled entailed the sale of roughly $800 million in Ginnie Mae MSRs by Ocwen Financial. Industry advisors familiar with the situation aren’t sure why ...

Although linked to higher likelihood of defaults for first mortgages, piggyback second liens do not necessarily mean bad results for the associated primary loan. However, subsequent second liens have had mixed results over certain time periods. “The empirical results for subsequent second liens are much more nuanced and, in many ways, more interesting than the piggyback results,” concludes Andrew Leventis, principal economist at the Federal Housing Finance Agency ...

The labor participation rate in the United States continues to lag, especially for the youngest potential homebuyers. If it continues to drift downward, as a recent paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland suggests, that could push the homeownership rate down to 62.5 percent, and result in an additional 20 percent to 25 percent decline in purchase-mortgage production, according to a recent review by analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “The conclusion we draw from the age breakouts of ...