“Cheap is the goal now,” said Chuck Klein, a managing partner at Mortgage Banking Solutions, Austin, TX. “I’m seeing many mortgage-banking firms that want to buy, and they’re looking at either smaller firms or branches.”

Citadel is the most active non-agency, non-prime lender in the U.S. In an interview with IMFnews, company founder and CEO Dan Perl said, “We’ll do $11 million to $12 million, at least" for the month of March.

Even though the Johnson-Crapo bill has no future outside of the Senate, one thing is certain regarding Fannie and Freddie: the two will continue to earn a ton of money going forward.

Stop the presses! The Johnson-Crapo bill is almost ready! Really! Of course, it's going nowhere in the House.

According to exclusive figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, once Fifth Third departs, there will be just two depositories in the top 10: Flagstar and U.S. Bank.

Mortgage repurchases peaked in 2009 at $34.276 billion, fell to $31.811 billion in 2010 and $20.943 billion in 2011, and then dropped to just $12.966 billion in 2012.

The new regulations seek to streamline the reporting process and provide more timely access to data about potential fraud.

According to exclusive survey figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, loan brokers accounted for 9.8 percent of all originations in the fourth quarter, a slight improvement from the 9.6 percent market share reading in the third quarter.

Among other things, the eligibility standards will establish new risk-to-capital ratios for the nation’s seven active MI firms and could dictate how much in the way of dividends an MI can upstream to its parent company.

The new version incorporates lessons learned from the financial crisis of 2008 along with contemporary concerns about mortgage originations and servicing.