One executive, requesting his name not be used, said, “It completely wrecked our last day of the month. We were unable to sending closing packages, send disclosures, export files and such.”

Inside FHFA Lending also found another interesting trend: The top 50 HECM lenders are dominated by nonbanks, some of which are relatively new to the space.

Whatever happened to the sale of Cole Taylor Mortgage, which has been in the works for nine months or so? Good question. When we asked one source close to the deal, his response was this: “Think of the Energizer Bunny but with fairly old batteries.

Some banks and thrifts have been able to originate enough new mortgages to replace runoff from their portfolios, but the industry’s retained holdings of first-lien mortgages continued to decline in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Banks and thrifts held a total of $1.74 trillion in first-lien mortgages as of the end of 2013, down only 3.0 percent compared with the end of 2012 ... [Includes one data chart]

In the end, it's all about yield, which is why investors are going after "esoteric" ABS. Will non-prime MBS ever stage a comeback, even a mini-comeback?

Agreeing to speak only on background, some mortgage participants thought that ORI’s recapitalization plan raised serious concerns among potential investors.

The serious delinquency rate on servicer portfolios hasn’t improved much in the past year, from 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 to 5.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Fannie Mae this week released its STAR servicer rankings and hopefully a copy found its way to all those pesky regulators who think nonbank servicers can’t tell the difference between a debit and a credit.

Bank of America this week agreed to settle lawsuits filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency regarding non-agency mortgage-backed securities purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Eleven of the 18 non-agency MBS lawsuits filed by the FHFA in 2011 have now been settled and the claims against BofA and its affiliates were by far the largest. BofA said it agreed to make a total of $5.8 billion in payments to Fannie and Freddie as part of the settlement and spend $3.5 billion to ...

The monitor of the $25 billion national servicing settlement certified last week that the five participating banks completed their loss-mitigation obligations a year earlier than the three-year deadline set by the settlement. Regulators involved in the settlement continue to defend allowing the banks to complete a portion of their obligations by modifying mortgages in non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Residential Capital and Wells Fargo ...