During the first half of 2013, only about $2.05 billion of FHA loans exceeded $625,500, or about 1.5 percent of FHA business, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

Lenders generated an estimated $218 billion in purchase mortgages during the third quarter, the highest three-month volume since the third quarter of 2007.

Mortgage debt outstanding is on the rise again after after five long years of winter. Should mortgage servicers pop the champagne?

Banks maintain huge reserves of roughly $21.3 billion to cover residential loan repurchase requests, Inside Mortgage Trends discovered.

The agencies securitized just $35.46 billion of refinance loans during November, down 15 percent from the previous month, and refinances accounted for 44 percent of total issuance.

The strength of the non-agency jumbo market, at a time when securitization of these loans has slowed, suggests there is plenty of investor appetite for non-agency jumbos.

The Alt A origination estimate is based on the volume of first-lien conventional mortgages with interest rates ranging from 150 basis points over the prime mortgage rate to 300 bps over.

A rough measure of production profitability, the ratio of production income to origination volume, fell from 179 basis points in the second quarter to just 84 bps in the third. Back in the Wonderland of early 2012, this ratio was 203 bps.

During the first nine months of 2013, there were 512 different companies that sold mortgages to the government-sponsored enterprises that had been originated by loan correspondents of mortgage brokers. Some 324 of these lenders were involved in the broker-wholesale channel.

As a group, banks and thrifts reported net earnings of $4.76 billion on their mortgage-banking activity during the third quarter, a 42 percent drop from the second quarter.