A few months back, merger talks between Prospect and Caliber Home Loans broke down. To date, both companies have declined to discuss the matter.

Indirectly, Bill Erbey controls about 5.9 million shares of Altisource through a limited liability company called Salt Pond Holdings.

Warehouse lending consultants told IMFnews that many originators turned profitable after the first quarter, but are not making as much as they earned this time last year.

Mortgage advisors at Sindeo are paid a flat fee for every mortgage closed. Bonuses are based on customer satisfaction.

A fair question to ask is this: If DOJ goes after Mozilo, why not go after the owners of Ameriquest/Argent which created so much of the faulty subprime product that Greenwich securitized?

A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank call-report data confirms that mortgage banking profits strengthened significantly during the second quarter of 2014. Banks reported a combined $4.910 billion in mortgage banking income for the second quarter of this year, a 45.5 percent increase over the first three months of the year. Earnings releases from 21 publicly traded banks and thrifts showed a 31.5 percent increase in ... [Includes one data chart]

Mortgage banking income rose significantly in the second quarter of 2014 for both production and servicing activities, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports from 11 major lenders. The group, which includes most of the top publicly owned companies in the mortgage industry, reported a combined $1.371 billion in production-related income during the second quarter. That was up 57.0 percent from ... [Includes one data chart]

Real estate agents put an emphasis on local lenders over call center lenders, according to qualitative survey results from the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. Real estate agents indicated that delayed closings are much more common when a buyer is obtaining a mortgage from a call center lender than from a lender with a local office. “Agents crave information and certainty of closing,” said Tom Popik ...

Mid-sized nonbanks the likes of Prospect Mortgage and Guaranteed Rate reportedly have teams of employees whose job it is to look at company acquisitions, but whether any deals of size get completed by year end is another matter. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Trends, investment banking firms appear to be quite busy with buy- and sell-side clients. Many advisors believe smaller transactions could be plentiful in the second half of the year ...

In July, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed adding 40 new data fields for collection under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Industry attorneys advised lenders to look at their current operations through the data fields the CFPB will likely see and make adjustments before the federal regulator completes new in-depth analysis. Warren Traiger, counsel at the law firm of BuckleySandler, said the new HMDA data will be a fair lending “game changer” ...