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,

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?

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

The market for large "legacy" MSR deals appears to be ice cold. Then again, last week there were rumors that a $50 billion transaction might be in the works.

The FHFA will weigh the merits of taking legal action against vendors, but could take upwards of 12 months to make a final decision.

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.

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

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

CFPB Deputy Director Antonakes Plays Nice With Compliance Pros. When CFPB Deputy Director Steve Antonakes appeared before a mortgage servicing industry event some months back, he raised plenty of eyebrows – and a few hackles – with some unusually blunt comments about how unhappy the CFPB was with the industry’s practices and how aggressive the bureau planned to be in combatting them. Lingering apprehensiveness was in the air when he stepped onto a stage to deliver a lunch-time address before the American Bankers Association’s 2014 regulatory compliance conference earlier this month – so much so, in fact, that when he responded to polite applause from attendees with “Hello!,” he was greeted with a nervous silence from the crowd. Antonakes didn’t skip a beat ...

The House Financial Services Committee passed a handful of CFPB-related bills earlier this month, after a previously scheduled markup had been delayed by the death of the mother of Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, the ranking member on the committee. H.R. 3770, the CFPB-IG Act of 2013, introduced by Rep. Steve Stivers, R-OH, was approved 39-20. The bill would create a separate, independent inspector general for the CFPB. The CFPB currently shares an inspector general with the Federal Reserve System. H.R. 4262, the Bureau Advisory Commission Transparency Act, introduced by Rep. Sean Duffy, R-WI, was approved by voice vote. H.R. 4262 would open up CFPB advisory board meetings to the public. H.R. 4383, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Small Business ...