The Federal Housing Finance Agency is continuing to work on new standards that will dictate not only how much capital nonbank servicers must retain, but how much in liquidity reserves they will need, according to industry analysts and advisors familiar with the topic. Moreover, these officials believe that some type of unveiling of those standards – originally planned for December – has been pushed into the first quarter of 2015. “One problem [the] FHFA is facing is...

The top refi lender through the first nine months of 2014 was Wells Fargo with $38.56 billion, but Quicken wasn’t too far behind at $32.48 billion.

The fourth quarter of 2014 is turning out to be decent in terms of applications and pipelines.

If you’re looking to buy a foreclosure for a quick “flip,” you might want to act quickly. Inventory is shrinking rapidly...

Mortgage lenders have been chasing purchase-mortgage business since the refinance market started to subside early in 2013, but the refi sector showed considerable strength during the third quarter of this year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. Refinance originations increased by 21.4 percent from the second quarter to the third, with an estimated $136 billion in production volume. At the same time, purchase-mortgage originations rose by just 5.6 percent, to an estimated $209 billion. Refi lending is...[Includes five data charts]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should each implement a board-approved risk-management framework that specifically includes risk-based oversight of single-family seller/servicers, according to an advisory bulletin issued this week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The new “supervisory expectation” covers numerous seller/servicer oversight activities that the government-sponsored enterprises have done for years, albeit pulling them all together under a comprehensive framework. It implements a recommendation made by the FHFA inspector general in July, which expressed concern that the regulator is not paying enough attention to the financial condition of certain nonbank servicers that make up a growing share of Fannie/Freddie business. “FHFA expects...

Private mortgage insurers would support a front-end, risk-transfer program that makes greater use of MI, such as the one proposed by the Mortgage Bankers Association, to reduce taxpayer risk, according to MI executives. The MIs are interested in moving forward with a year-old MBA proposal for a risk-sharing program that would allow deeper MI coverage on loans with high loan-to-value ratios, and coverage on loans with LTVs below 80 percent, accompanied by a reduction in guaranty fees. Importantly, this would require lowering the floor on loss factors to account for these lower-risk loans, the MBA said. However, two important things must be...

Some foreclosed homeowners may have the option to repurchase their homes at fair market value following a new directive from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that calls for the two government-sponsored enterprises to relax policies related to the sale of real estate owned properties to defaulted borrowers. The two government-sponsored enterprises until now have required foreclosed borrowers that want to purchase their home from REO inventory to pay the full amount of the unpaid debt on their previous mortgage. “This is...

As one West Coast-based mortgage executive told IMFnews: “It can be a very tough space. You need lots of capital."

The sharp increase in industry holdings was fueled by a massive acquisition of credit card ABS by TD Bank...