Paul Muolo

The nation’s megabanks are continuing to sit on their nonperforming residential loans, although some are currently out in the market with mid-sized packages.

Over the past 18 months REITs have raised $26 billion in new equity. Almost all of it has been targeted toward MBS investments. Very little has been plowed into mortgage servicing rights.

Roughly 18 representatives of the residential lending industry sat around a table this past Wednesday at the Treasury Department in Washington with various members of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. According to those in attendance, the messages delivered by the CFPB were loud and clear: (*)Flat fee compensation is a done deal. Deal with it. (*)CFPB wants licensing and regulatory parity for banks and nonbanks alike. (*)If you have payments made to affiliates your life will be more complicated and difficult. (*)The CFPB doesn’t care that its mortgage compensation proposal will destroy the lending industry and hand the business over to the nation’s largest banks.

What if flat fee loan officer/mortgage banker compensation prevails?

In a recent presentation to investors Fortress Investment Group estimated that $4 trillion in mortgage servicing rights may change hands over the next few years, but MSR investors and others say that estimate is much too high.

On Wednesday industry officials met with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to discuss the agency’s new proposal to reengineer how loan officers and brokers can make a living. To call it a nightmare might be an understatement, we were told by attendees.

Paul M. Herron, who founded the Washington Bureau of National Mortgage News in the early 1980s, died this past weekend. He was 91.

Mortgage firms that use the correspondent and wholesale channels to fund loans experienced strong growth in the first quarter, according to preliminary survey information being compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.

WarehouseOne of Trenton, N.J., which has been in business since 1998, is demanding that a troubled lender with a similar-sounding name stop using that name.

Does anyone in government feel sorry enough for jumbo borrowers that they would design a HARP program to help these (presumably) high net worth individuals take advantage of a 3.5% fixed-rate mortgage?

Mortgage applications increased by almost 4% for the week ending May 18—thanks to surging refinancings—according to new figures compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Citigroup, a somewhat frequent seller of nonperforming loans, is in the market with a $99 million package of troubled residential mortgages, according to investors that have looked at the package.

Bank of America is in the market with a $2 billion package of mortgage servicing rights tied to loans that reside in private-label securitizations, according to bidders and investors briefed on the package.

Political races bring on all sorts of silly comparisons so why not take a stab at asking this: who would produce a more profitable mortgage banking company: President Obama or Mitt Romney?

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes rose 3.4% in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.62 million units.

Residential Capital Corp. last week began mailing out letters to its 2.5 million mortgage customers informing them of the firm’s bankruptcy filing but also cautioning them about keeping their loans current.

It seems clear that changes made to the HARP program late last year have spurred a strong wave of usage that the industry didn’t anticipate. It doesn’t matter, of course: mortgage bankers are now writing new HARP loans left and right and competition is picking up thanks to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac upgrading their AU systems.

Tucker, who appears to have no direct mortgage experience, succeeds Smriti Laxman Popenoe, who had been serving as interim president of PHH Mortgage since March 2012.

You remember the HARP program, don’t you? Originally, the idea was to refinance current but high LTV Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac borrowers into new, lower-rate loans—provided they were current. Home values (and lack of equity) reeked havoc on the concept so Uncle Sam took the LTV girdle off.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the government’s Small Business Review Panel next week will hold a private forum on its new proposal to revise the way loan officers, brokers and lenders are compensated on loan transactions.