“Volume is holding up pretty strong,” said Bill Lowman, CEO of American Pacific Mortgage, Roseville, CA.

The slope also remained slippery for home-equity debt outstanding. The Federal Reserve reported $441.6 billion of home-equity loans outstanding at the end of 2020, an 11.9% drop from the previous year.

Thrifts posted a hefty 11.2% increase in their MBS portfolios, while credit unions boosted their holdings by 7.8%...

The company added: “We cannot predict the continued impact of an increased interest rate environment on our originations or gain-on-sale margins. Further, there is no assurance that these preliminary results will be indicative of our final results for the three months ended March 31, 2021 or in any future period.”

“More than 11% of borrowers in forbearance have now exceeded the 12-month mark,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s SVP and chief economist. “We anticipate that servicers will be busy over the next month"...

The sudden dominance of nonbanks in mortgage banking profits was due to Rocket Companies, parent of Quicken Loans...

Even non-agency MBS had a strong month, with daily trades averaging $3.5 billion, a sequential monthly improvement of 20.6%.

Overall, the FHLB profit picture was somewhat worse in the fourth quarter. Their combined net income fell to $657 million, down 20.4% from the third quarter...

Government-mandated forbearance paid off for Chase...

Investment bankers like Mark Garland of SitusAMC believe that by the third quarter bulk MSR sales could be on a roll...