Nominee for HUD Secretary Purchases House Prior to Confirmation. With his Senate confirmation still up in the air, Ben Carson, President Trump’s pick to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has bought a $1.3 million house in an affluent neighborhood in Fairfax, VA, the Washingtonian has reported. According to the magazine, Carson’s new abode is a 6,400-square-foot traditional-style house with five bedrooms and four and a half baths. It is located on a 1.5 acres, a short distance from the Wolf Trap concert venue and the Meadowlark Botanical gardens. The 65-year-old neurosurgeon and his wife Candy also own million-dollar homes in Florida and Baltimore County, MD. The Senate Banking Committee approved Carson’s nomination on Jan. 24 but the full Senate has yet to vote on it. No date for a confirmation vote has been set ...

The secondary market for bulk agency mortgage servicing rights is beginning to pick up a decent head of steam, but one factor is holding it back from a full-throttle: worries about prepayment speeds. “We’ve had one month of low prepayment numbers,” said Mark Garland, president of MountainView Servicing Group, Denver. “A couple of more months would be better.” According to investment bankers who work the market, although rates have been on a steady climb since the November election – the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury is...

Sponsors can generally meet the requirements by retaining the most subordinate tranches of the securitization equaling at least 5.0 percent of the deal…

Agency MBS trading volumes peaked back in 2008 – the height of the financial crisis – at $344.9 billion daily.

Phoenix Capital is offering a private jumbo MSR portfolio sized at $216 million…

Blame the whole loan-hungry megabanks for the low mortgage securitization rate?

It doesn’t get any better than this: Ginnie Mae production hit a record $545 billion in 2016…

A recall of the defect taxonomy would be a blow to lenders…

Besides the GSEs, one Fairholme’s most speculative investments is Sears Holdings Corp., the struggling retailer…

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is facing criticism for its handling of FHA’s loan quality assessment methodology. A draft of the so-called defect taxonomy was published without proper departmental clearance, according to a recent report by HUD’s Office of Inspector General. The defect taxonomy is one of 13 FHA-related documents the OIG claims were not properly cleared. The OIG called on HUD to pursue departmental clearance for the documents and policies and to recall any documents that can’t be appropriately cleared. A recall of the defect taxonomy would be...