Will a coming boom in the production of non-qualified mortgages help residential lenders survive the origination slump?

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew acknowledged that HAMP hasn’t been as successful as the Obama administration would have liked.

Sen. Shelby is an Alabama Republican with a populist streak who is no friend of the GSEs, but he may side with shareholders of the two companies who are getting shafted by Treasury “sweeps.”

To participate in the MSR market, institutional investors must partner with licensed and compliant servicers.

The downfall of Community Home is intriguing: the servicer closed its Jackson office and had customers send payments to Las Vegas. From there, payments were sent to a location in Costa Rica, according to AP.

In case you haven’t noticed, many mortgage stocks are trading much closer to their 52-week lows than their highs.

The Treasury Department will hold meetings with issuers of non-agency MBS in the coming months to pick their brains on how the government can assist in uncovering "new paths" to increase private investment.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has largely wrapped up its enforcement on structured finance issues related to the financial crisis, according to current and former officials at the federal regulator. The SEC’s Complex Financial Instruments Unit is now focusing on more recent issues in the structured finance sector. “The unit has now shifted its attention to the next frontier, and I expect it to zero in on the structuring, rating, valuation, sale, and use of other types of complex financial products, such as commercial MBS, structured notes and credit default swaps,” Andrew Ceresney, the director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, said in May. Stephen Crimmins, a partner at the law firm of K&L Gates who previously worked at the SEC for 14 years, said...

Secondary mortgage market participants generally support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed “right to cure” a mortgage that inadvertently breaches the qualified mortgage 3 percent points-and-fees cap – but they want to see it made more assignee-friendly. Earlier this year, the CFPB proposed allowing a limited cure for a points-and-fee violation if the creditor in good faith intended to originate the loan as a QM under the bureau’s ability-to-repay rule and the loan otherwise meets the requirements of a QM. A refund of the overage would have to be paid to the consumer and the party seeking to cure the violation (either creditor or assignee) would have to follow certain policies and procedures for post-consummation review of loans. In its comment letter to the CFPB, Fannie Mae suggested...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency late last week announced it reached a nearly $100 million settlement with RBS Securities to settle allegations tied to non-agency MBS bought by Freddie Mac from 2005 to 2007, but the deal represents just a fraction of the firm’s remaining exposure. The $99.5 million settlement only resolves claims against RBS in FHFA v. Ally Financial Inc. in the Southern District of New York. Ally Financial is the successor company to GMAC-RFC, a now defunct non-agency MBS issuer. Last week’s deal is...