In total, almost 72 percent of all Ocwen employees are domiciled overseas where labor costs are much cheaper.

Conforming loan limits could go up for the first time in years as the Federal Housing Finance Agency formally announced plans to use one of its own home price indexes to calculate changes. “Given the rising prices, it is now important that FHFA formally establish the specific methodology it will use for tracking prices and adjusting the baseline loan limit,” the agency said in a public notice seeking feedback. The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 prevents...

Six months into the latest representations-and-warranties framework from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, lenders said they appreciate the added clarity but are approaching the changes with caution as more transparency is still needed. The new rules, announced by the government-sponsored enterprises in November 2014, were made to ease lenders’ concerns about repurchase requests for loans that contain data inaccuracies or misrepresentations. During last week’s secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association, Jeremy Potter, general counsel and chief compliance officer at Norcom Mortgage, said...

Mortgage-related issues will likely play a central role in the end product of financial regulatory relief legislation working its way through the U.S. Senate. For now, though, the measure passed by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee last week is really an opening gambit, as congressional staffers confer over technical details and lawmakers horse trade and arm twist. “It’s a starter,” said Bob Davis, head of mortgage markets and the senior lobbyist at the American Bankers Association, speaking of the bill sponsored by committee chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, the Financial Regulatory Improvement Act of 2015. “The Shelby bill will be...

Moreover, 12 of the top 20 originators are now nonbanks, all of which rely heavily on commercial banks for warehouse credit

Texas and Florida, the second- and third-largest sources of GSE business, both saw solid gains from a year ago...

Although Freddie Mac did not disclose the exact purchase price, it said the cover bid was in "the mid 70s of UPB..."

Although only 13 banks reported net losses on mortgage banking during 1Q – compared to 756 institutions with net profits – several of the top players earned less than they did in the fourth quarter.

One new portfolio that came out for bid recently entails the transfer of $328 million of Fannie Mae receivables in Massachusetts.

The common securitization platform and single security are years away, but officials from the GSEs, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Common Securitization Solutions, LLC, offered additional information about future plans and the inner workings of the platform at the Mortgage Bankers Association Secondary Conference in New York this week. Robert Fishman, FHFA’s senior associate director in the office of strategic initiatives, said the two initiatives are intimately related because the CSP will be the platform to issue the single security. The CSP was already been underway when the single security was announced a year ago. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “are critical to the current function of the housing market. So while it’s very helpful to think about the...