First Mortgage Corp., Ontario, CA, this month completed its liquidation, selling its branch network and $6 billion of servicing rights to other firms, and winding down a 44-year-old business that catered to FHA borrowers with lower credit scores. Jean Ziroli-Kobielsky, a recruiter for the family-owned business, noted that it wasn’t fear of regulatory oversight that prompted her father and brother to sell FMC, it was technology: “Some of our technology systems were still using DOS,” she told Inside Mortgage Finance. (DOS, or disk operating system, was the precursor to the Microsoft Windows software line for PCs.) She said...

There was some good news from Ocwen: the company earned $44.2 million from servicing sales...

“The flow market remains consistent with pricing, while the bulk market ebbs and flows with the 10-year and mortgage spreads,” said Tom Piercy of Interactive Mortgage Advisors.

Meanwhile, the volume of securitized retail loans was down 3.6 percent from the second quarter.

The megabanks – Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and U.S. Bank – ranked first through fourth, respectively, with a combined agency market share of 40.3 percent at Sept. 30.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae securitized $119.7 billion of correspondent-originated loans during the third quarter of 2015, a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis reveals. That was up 8.6 percent from the second quarter. Meanwhile, broker production fell 10.6 percent during the third quarter. Brokered loans accounted for just 11.5 percent of agency mortgage-backed securities issued during the third quarter, down from 12.9 percent in ... [Includes one data chart]

The share price of Walter Investment Management Corp. tumbled just over 7 percent in trading midweek on no news...

Members of the Ziroli family, which owned the lender/servicer, could not be reached for comment.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development late last week withdrew a controversial proposed rule that aimed to speed the process by which residential servicers file FHA insurance claims. A number of industry participants were critical of the proposed claims-filing deadline, warning that it would prompt significant problems. Among other provisions, the proposal issued in July would have established a deadline for insurance claims to be filed with the FHA. “This new deadline will ensure FHA can effectively manage and process timely claims,” HUD said at the time. Originally, the agency proposed...

The fear for MI firms, and the analysts who cover them, is that another cut in the MIP would eat into policies that might be written by the private mortgage insurance sector.