“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.

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.

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.

In a new report, Compass Point Research & Trading asks: “Are the special servicers bad actors?” CPR&T concludes the answer is no, but notes “there is some merit” to concerns about the rapid portfolio growth at certain firms…

Another bank bites the dust in wholesale: Fifth Third Bank, which ranks second among depositories in the channel, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

A few weeks back, Rep. Mark Takano, D-CA, called for Congressional hearings on the single-family rental MBS market, singling out investments made by the Blackstone Group.

Company executive Doug Reilly, commenting on the mortgage M&A market, had this to say: “It seems we need to take 20 girls to the alter just to marry one”…