A sharp turnaround by the two biggest banks in the mortgage banking business led to a significant increase in aggregate mortgage banking income reported by commercial banks in the first quarter. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis and ranking reveals that banks reported a combined $4.215 billion in noninterest income on their mortgage banking activities during the first quarter of 2011. That was up 20.8 percent from the industry’s $3.488 billion in mortgage banking income during the fourth quarter of 2010. But in the top-heavy mortgage banking market, the results were skewed dramatically by the performance of... [Includes one data chart]

Credit card giant Discover Financial Services is adding mortgages to its menu of financial products and services with the acquisition of Home Loan Center, a subsidiary of Tree.com. The sale price for Home Loan Center, which operates as LendingTree Loans, is up to $56.0 million. LendingTree, a correspondent lender, originates and processes home loans in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The acquisition includes substantially all of HLC’s operating and related assets as well as LendingTree’s lead-generation system, adding a residential mortgage origination component to Discover’s direct lending system. Discover, a direct banking and...

The federal government's gradual pullback as an investor in the MBS market is beginning to open more space for commercial banks and other private investors. Commercial banks increased their investment in residential MBS by a solid 6.5 percent during the first quarter, pushing their combined holdings to a record $1.311 trillion. That represented about 20.0 percent of an overall MBS market that has been shrinking since the third quarter of 2009. Bank holdings of residential MBS were up 14.2 percent from the first quarter of last year. Through the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the retained holdings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal government held... [Includes two data charts]

Government housing policy and agencies played a much larger role in the housing crisis than initially believed, but a fresh look at the conclusions of two GSE critics has prompted a top JPMorgan Chase analyst to take the unusual step of issuing a public retraction.

Several of the top mortgage servicers in the industry reported ongoing shrinkage in their portfolios during the first quarter of 2011, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking. As a group, the top five servicers reported a 1.1 percent drop in their combined servicing operations from... [Includes one data chart]

Mortgage origination activity dropped sharply in early 2011 and momentum is pointing toward further declines as the housing market limps into a new buying season. Mortgage lenders generated an estimated $325.0 billion in single-family originations during the first three months of the year, a decline of... [Includes two data charts]

The outgoing president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City turned some heads this week when he declared that the nation’s largest banks and recipients of federal bailout funds should be re-branded as government-sponsored enterprises and their lending activities should be curtailed accordingly. Thomas Hoenig reportedly told...

Top mortgage banking operations reported a significant downturn in production-related earnings during the fourth quarter of 2010, but the aggregate results mostly reflected severe buyback expenses at one of the industry’s largest lenders. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports from nine mortgage lenders found...[Includes one data chart and one graph]

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks all recorded significant declines in new debt issuance during 2010. The GSEs collectively issued $3.454 trillion in new debt during 2010, a decline of 25.3 percent from the previous year. New issuance effectively just replaced...[Includes one data chart]

Mortgage banking continued to be very profitable for most of the hundreds of banks involved in the industry in 2010, but earnings fell significantly from the previous year, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. Newly released call report data show...[Includes one data chart and one graph]