It’s been a quiet year for mortgage-related M&A. (Credit the pandemic and the resulting refi boom.) Meanwhile, some ponder what a normal origination year might look like.

A funny thing happened to loanDepot on its way to a supposed initial public offering: A debt offering. Yield? We don’t know.

Wall Street is pitching mortgage IPOs left and right these days, but not everyone is taking the bait. Case in point: Freedom Mortgage.

Mortgage originators are so plush with profits that very few need to sell MSRs. Still, servicing deals are getting done. But pricing isn’t exactly robust.

Mortgage origination profits haven’t been this good in decades. Gain-on-sale margins of 600 bps on government loans? At some shops, yes.

The nation’s largest table-funder, UWM will become a public company via a SPAC. When’s the last time a wholesale-only lender went public? Decades.

The mortgage data provider said the sweetened offer of $66 a share is still significantly low. The vendor also refused a request for due diligence from the investor group.

Is Bill Foley, the 75-year-old non-executive chairman of title insurance giant Fidelity National, pondering retirement? Don't bet on it. He's shaking the mortgage vendor M&A tree big time.

It took 15 months for the acquisition-minded Freedom Mortgage to close on RoundPoint. What snarled the deal? Low interest rates, for starters.