Paul Muolo

In the “pre-crash” days of the mortgage industry two facts were unmovable: that the average nationwide home price would never fall and that servicing rights would never decline.

Let me see if I can state this plainly: if housing does not recover in any meaningful way the U.S. economy is sunk. This is a platitude that every mortgage banker worth his/her salt knows. But there is one huge stumbling block to a housing recovery: loan standards and the qualified residential mortgage test, which – as presently written – demands a 20% downpayment from a consumer.

Fannie Mae is telling outside law firms handling defaulted loans in certain states that they must reapply with the GSE and fill out a ‘request for proposal’ if they want to continue working for the company.

A division of PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust said it has hired a former top executive from Bank of America to run its fledgling correspondent lending division.

On paper, a revival in sensible subprime lending—the operative word being “sensible”—sounds like an idea whose time has come again. During the financial meltdown of the past three years four million households have lost their homes and thanks to a nearly 10% unemployment rate, credit scores have been scorched.

That quiet sound of nothing really going on is the nonperforming loan market. We continue to hear reports that plenty of NPL packages are being offered, but when it comes to actual sales, that’s another matter.

Daryl Schwartz, the acquisition chief for G8 Capital, a private equity fund that invests in real estate and nonperforming mortgages, left the company last week.

Is now the time for a contrarian play in wholesale lending? Consider the case of Total Mortgage Services, an up and coming lender based in Milford, Conn. Today it announced that it has hired five new wholesale account executives, bringing to 12 its AE headcount.

TMS Funding, the wholesale arm of Total Mortgage Services, Milford, Conn., on Tuesday announced that it has hired five new account executives with 72 years of combined experience.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is expected to release its long-awaited proposal on changing servicing compensation by July with three main options being offered to the industry, according to servicing advisors close to the issue.

It’s a holiday weekend in the middle of year, and as summer approaches what better time to preview our ’Five Mortgage Firms to Keep an Eye On (And Why)’ report. A more extensive analysis of these five (and five additional companies) will appear next month on the MortgageStats.com website, which features up-to-the minute rankings, analysis and more.

Interactive Mortgage Advisors is selling a $481 million Fannie Mae bulk residential servicing portfolio that has just five months of seasoning and no delinquencies or foreclosures.

Certain Luddites and ignoramuses in Congress believe we should go back to the ‘Good Old Days’ when our banks and thrifts held mortgages in portfolio. They don’t quite understand the whole concept of a mismatch between assets (mortgages) and liabilities (deposits.)

Senate Republicans late Thursday declared victory in their effort to use a procedural maneuver to prevent the president from making any recess appointments during the Memorial Day holiday.

Investor, speculator and short seller David Einhorn is ponying up $200 million to buy a minority stake in The New York Mets baseball team. Why is this mortgage news?

Industry advisors and investment banking sources note that the mortgage market is hardly booming and now may not be an opportune time to test the IPO waters. Then again, there's a school of thought that says perhaps the industry's darkest days are behind it and maybe now is the time to sell.

Although Congress and the White House are betting that in time the private sector will fill the void created by a diminished Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a new report from Standard & Poor's predicts that any recovery in the private label market is still years away.

Sidus Financial, a nonbank mortgage firm that is at least 11 years old, is pulling the plug on its wholesale and correspondent lending division, according to correspondence provided to National Mortgage News.

As we all know, subprime securitization will return – someday. Of course, none of us know when that day will be. When it comes to creating mortgage bonds out of loans made to consumers with poor credit, many folks I’ve talked to think we’re looking at three to five years, at least.

No doubt, these are tough times for loan officers at both nonbanks and depositories. Loan production is down, the purchase money business is in the tank, and new compensation rules may result in LOs taking home less money over time.