Paul Muolo

Wells Fargo is calling it quits on wholesale lending, dealing yet another devastating blow to this struggling origination channel.

Last summer rumors were spreading that a private equity firm had amassed $1 billion in cash and was eyeing investments in mortgage banking firms. A year later it appears that no such deals were struck by the unnamed fund, but that hasn’t stopped the talk about PE firms still looking at the sector.

Just eight months ago Southwest Bank had no warehouse lending commitments on its books, but today that figure stands at $80 million and growing.

Now we’re told (but unconfirmed) that many large buyers of closed mortgages (correspondent purchasers, that is) have similar exclusionary lists, though they may call it something else.

Armour Residential REIT hopes to sell 40 million additional shares of stock in a deal that could raise an additional $305 million, at least.

CitiMortgage, a top 10 ranked correspondent buyer of mortgages, has an “exclusionary” list of lenders that it will no longer conduct business with.

If you’re wondering why there haven’t been more jumbo MBS deals this year just look at the math. Wells Fargo, for instance, has an average cost of funds of 50 basis points.

First Tennessee Bank, Memphis, ended June with $2.7 billion of warehouse lending commitments on its books, an all-time high for the bank.

Even before the government-controlled Ally Financial threw its mortgage division into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, rumors were circulating this spring that the “bank” end of the company would exit the warehouse lending arena.

Finding qualified loan officers isn’t the problem—it’s finding LOs who can get licensed so they can work for a broker.

Late last week National Mortgages News reported that although mortgage employment was essentially flat in May, that loan brokerage firms have been hiring. But as we report today, a big stumbling block to richer brokerage hiring remains: finding LOs who are licensed and “ready to go.”

THIS JUST IN: Is a new subprime lender about to emerge? I know of one industry veteran who hopes to secure financing to originate nonprime low LTV mortgages.

Nationstar says it is increasing by $125 million its bid on mortgage-related assets that it hopes to buy from the bankrupt Residential Capital Corp.

It appears mortgage brokerage firms across the nation are hiring – so says Don Frommeyer, senior vice president of Amtrust Mortgage Funding, Carmel, Ind.

If your mortgage banking employer isn’t making money hand-over-fist then there’s something terribly wrong.

A House investigative report says Countrywide Home Loans doled out almost 18,000 “Friends of Angelo” loans over a 12-year period, but the price breaks were not very significant.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is in the throes of working on financial compliance audits of some of the nation’s largest nonbank mortgage lenders and hopes to complete at least one of these audits in the next few weeks.

It’s no secret that the mortgage industry – loan brokers in particular – hate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s loan officer compensation proposal, especially any language that offers ‘flat fee’ payments to companies or originators. Comments about the proposal are still being filed and some trade group officials (speaking off-the-record) contend that the “fix is in” and that the young agency is more concerned with meeting the rule making deadline of early 2013 instead of “getting it right.”

Even though the housing market is nearing (or reached) a bottom (thanks to absurdly low rates) brokers continue to face public criticism for their role in the mortgage crisis.

Loan brokers using table funding captured 9.9% of the origination market in the first quarter, a slight gain from 4Q when the sector had a 9.7% share, according to new figures compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.