Two investment banking firms – Interactive Mortgage Advisors and MountainView Servicing Group – have at least $17 billion (combined) in mortgage servicing rights auctions in the works, a sign that the sector is heating up as the year draws to a close. Several other advisory firms have announced deals in the past few weeks, including The Prestwick Group and Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp. Also, sources contend that investment banker Houlihan Lokey is busy as well, though company officials there declined to comment for this story. Mark Garland, president of MountainView, said...

Time to rejoice: purchase-lending could regularly top $1 trillion a year...

On the $5.9 billion MSR pool, 42 percent of the rights are tied to mortgages in California, Florida and Texas...

American Homes 4 Rent, the largest publicly traded player in the single-family rental market, late this week agreed to buy American Residential Properties in a deal valued at $1.5 billion. It was the second transaction involving real estate investment trusts in the SFR sector within three months, and has sparked talk of further consolidation, including perhaps mortgage REITs. A research note from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, penned right before the AH4R-ARP combination was unveiled, noted that mergers in the space are possible “given current valuation discounts ….” In other words, the share prices of single-family rental REITs have been...

Now that President Obama has signed legislation to cap Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac CEO pay, which GSE chief will leave first?

The average loan size is $15.36 million, the average interest rate 3.60 percent.

It may be holiday week, but Interactive Mortgage Advisors is out with a handful of new MSR offerings...

One investment banker familiar with the firm said, “a CFO disruption so close to the IPO just doesn’t look good.”

Interest rates are rising and that means more MSR packages are likely to hit the market.

Quite a few executives believe the central bank should move forward with a “one and done” strategy and be done with it...