The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has taken an enforcement action against a Dallas builder who allegedly referred customers to local mortgage lenders and received illegal kickbacks.

New compliance requirements don’t typically inspire the most innovative technology enhancements in the mortgage industry. But the upcoming overhaul of borrower disclosure forms has created an opportunity to re-engineer the way lenders and title companies execute mortgage closings, according to Document Systems Inc. CEO Dominic Iannitti.

Redwood Trust, which sold $424 million of mortgage-backed securities at spreads of 190 basis points, was the big gainer among mortgage stocks on Friday.

Republican senators are becoming suspicious of the huge amount of consumer data the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is buying and collecting.

A large bid list of nonagency residential mortgage-backed securities in the market this week may have been the first move in a regulatory plan for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to divest some of its portfolio assets.

Analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods believe fears about a Federal Reserve Board exit from its mortgage-backed securities holdings in the near future are overdone.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is coming under pressure from House Republicans to issue a policy that would ban the Federal Housing Administration from refinancing any loans that have been seized by a county via eminent domain.