Jeff Mezger, president and CEO of KB Home, said the first-timer share of home purchases is rising due to increased employment, noting cities in Texas as an example.

Credit Suisse submitted winning bids on all of the non-agency MBS auctioned by BlackRock, with most of the securities quickly being placed with other investors.

While affluent borrowers prefer to obtain mortgage financing from their primary bank, some in this category are willing to shop, particularly when competing lenders offer lower interest rates or more attractive loan products.

While re-REMIC issuance is currently increasing, volume is nowhere near the levels seen in 2009 and 2010 when $60 billion in such product came to market.

One critic of the report on nonbank risk had this to say: “It’s just ridiculous what they [the IG] get away with. There’s risk in every business. Don’t they get it?”

By comparison, in the first quarter of 2014, Freedom averaged $1.28 billion of originations per month.

Union Mortgage has been losing some of its top executives over the past year. A few months back, its president and CEO Robert Eastep departed for Stonegate Mortgage…

Even if home prices fall by 10 percent, most borrowers in jumbo MBS issued in recent years will have more equity than they had at the time of origination, said Grant Bailey of Fitch Ratings.

Did someone really pay a $300,000 signing bonuses to a new LO?

According to an Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of loan-level data on mortgage-backed securities from the GSEs, underwriting standards on mortgages have loosened only slightly over the past year.