How much capital should nonbank mortgage servicers be required to have? The question is getting louder and louder.

Mortgage REITs found a cheap source of funding in the Federal Home Loan Bank system. But will the FHFA permanently block their access or just restrict it?

We talked a handful of wholesalers and were told the figure is much lower – in the range of 2.2 percent to 2.5 percent. Broker-sourced loans account for less than 10 percent of all loans funded today,

When in doubt, hire an outside QM/ATR consultant to assure compliance.

But do Fannie and Freddie really represent a faulty business model, as the White House and Treasury Department keep declaring?

In other mortgage-stock news, Ellie Mae Co-founder, Chairman and CEO Sig Anderman has been exercising stock options of late, and selling shares in the company.

Others believe thesecases could have a chilling effect on FHA lending to the detriment of first-time homebuyers and borrowers with insufficient cash for a downpayment.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council of the Treasury Department has its eye on the rapidly growing market presence of nonbank servicers such as Ocwen, Nationstar Mortgage and Walter Investment Management.

Last week, the CFPB ordered GE Capital Retail Bank – a financial institution in New Jersey now known as Synchrony Bank – to provide approximately $225 million in relief to consumers harmed by alleged illegal and discriminatory credit card practices. Under the terms of a consent order brought by the bureau, GE Capital is required to refund $56 million to approximately 638,000 consumers who were subjected to allegedly deceptive marketing practices. As part of the joint enforcement action by the CFPB and Department of Justice, GE Capital must also provide an additional $169 million to about 108,000 borrowers excluded from debt relief offers because of their national origin. The consent order represents the federal government’s largest credit card discrimination settlement in history...

SunTrust Mortgage, based in Richmond, VA, agreed to pay a total of $968 million to settle allegations of origination and servicing wrongdoing under a consent order brought by the CFPB. The Department of Justice, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and state attorneys general from 49 states and the District of Columbia joined in the settlement, which stemmed from the National Mortgage Servicing Settlement. The company will provide $500 million in loss-mitigation relief to underwater borrowers. The order also will require SunTrust to pay $40 million to approximately 48,000 consumers who lost their homes to foreclosure, and $10 million to cover losses it caused to the FHA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Rural Housing Service. The order...