The report, conducted by Alvarez & Marshall, was making the rounds in Washington Wednesday morning. John O’Neill, a managing director in the evaluation firm of Alvarez & Marsal, confirmed to IMFnews that his company conducted an evaluation on the GSEs for the Blackstone Group.

M&A specialists believe that some lenders obtain their Ginnie approvals merely for the purpose of increasing their franchise value without having solid plans to issue securities.

Richmond's mayor said the new rehabilitation program can be completed in addition to eminent domain. However, significant opposition to ED from mortgage industry participants appears to have changed how the city plans to implement its latest plan.

It would appear that Wells Fargo is raiding the senior staff of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Of course, it could be a mere coincidence.

Translation into English: If you bought Ocwen’s stock at $60 and it’s now trading at $40 and you’re really steamed, give us a call.

Servicers would face annual government certifications and biennial examinations by the new regulator/insurance fund. Minimum operational and management standards would be created for internal controls, recordkeeping, audit systems, and reporting, to name just a few.

For lenders that contribute at least 15 percent of the loans included in an issuance, Fitch said it will conduct an enhanced operational review of the lender’s origination program and underwriting guidelines.

How does the Johnson-Crapo bill favor senior preferred shareholders? The language notes that when assets in Fannie and Freddie are eventually sold, the idea is to “maximize the return for the senior preferred share-holders of the enterprises”…

The House Financial Services Committee late last week passed bipartisan legislation that would provide an alternate way of defining “rural” for purposes of the CFPB’s qualified mortgage standard so a bank could make its case to the bureau as to why a jurisdiction should be fit into that category. H.R. 2672 would direct the CFPB to establish an application process under which a person who lives or does business in a state may apply to have an area designated as a rural area for the purpose of exempting certain loans from the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule if that area has not already been designated as such by the bureau.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, recently threatened to subpoena the CFPB to supply information on the bureau’s indirect auto lending guidance and the methodology it uses in determining whether fair lending violations exist in that space. “By refusing to disclose this information, the bureau has deliberately deprived indirect auto lenders of any meaningful way to tailor their company’s lending practices and compliance systems so as to mitigate or eliminate the fair lending risk the bureau asserts to be present,” Hensarling said in a recent letter to CFPB Director Richard Cordray.