Paul Muolo

Residential servicers completed 65,000 foreclosures in February, an 8% decline from the prior month and just about flat from the same period a year ago, according to new figures compiled by CoreLogic, Santa Ana, Calif.

The headline of today's daily 'What We're Hearing' blast sounds like junk mail that you might see in your email inbox. But rest assured, certain mortgage REITs are paying hefty dividends these days. At the top of the list is Annaly Capital Management, which has a 13.5% dividend/yield rate.

Although rates have been trending downward this week, new mortgage applications fell by almost 3% for the week ending March 23, according to new figures compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Freddie Mac purchased $37.6 billion of residential loans from its seller/servicers in February, a 10% increase from the prior month, and a sign perhaps that Bank of America's recent decision to quit Fannie Mae is helping Freddie.

It appears the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will revisit the issue of loan officer compensation - and maybe even in a way that benefits nonbank LOs. The whole issue is too early to predict, and we suggest you visit the main National Mortgage News website for a just breaking update.

Contracts to purchase previously owned homes eased by half a point in February on a sequential basis, but rose 9% compared to the same month last year, according to new figures released by the National Association of Realtors.

Who says a consumer with a low FICO score can't get a mortgage? A recent survey conducted by National Mortgage News found five lenders that are willing to extend credit to borrowers with FICOs of 600 or less. The three lenders with the lowest FICO scores include TD Banknorth Mortgage, Embrace Home Loans, and Compass Bank.

HSBC's residential lending and servicing business continues to be under what the bank calls a "strategic review," leaving its mortgage workers in limbo.

Is the 'flow' servicing market poised for a revival? Well, not exactly, but there are signs of life in the sector, where an originator pledges to sell mortgage servicing rights to a buyer on a regular basis.

If you're looking for the missing piece to the mortgage "deconsolidation" equation, its name is Wells Fargo. Never before in the annals of residential finance has one company amassed such an enormous market share in lending (27%) and servicing (20%).

The government-owned Ally Financial sold $250 million of legacy mortgages last year, using the whole loan securitization market, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

New single-family home sales fell 1.6% in February to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 313,000 units, but prices jumped to their highest level in eight months, according to government figures released Friday morning.

In case you missed the story on the National Mortgage News website, here's a headline for you: Some firms have the ability to make $10,000 per loan on HARP 2.0 loans. A nice chunk of that profit estimate is tied to secondary market pricing.

With profit margins on HARP 2.0 refinancings sky high, Wells Fargo & Co., is putting caps on the loan-to-value ratio it will accept from third-party lenders, National Mortgage News has learned.

Wells Fargo & Co. - the nation's largest buyer of closed loans outside of the GSEs - has thrown down the gauntlet on the correspondent market, creating an "exclusionary list" of 88 firms that it will no longer buy loans from. How are lenders reacting so far? With a mixture of fear of being on the list and an indifferent "so what?"

Wells Fargo/Wells Fargo Funding isn't saying much about its 'exclusionary list' of mortgage firms that it will not buy loans from in the secondary market. (National Mortgage News has been reporting on the issue since Monday.) And of course, correspondent lenders want to know one thing and one thing only: Am I on the list?

The nation's megabanks -- Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America -- are cleaning up on the HARP 2.0 program, earning massive profits on the origination of these high LTV refinancings, according to a new report from Amherst Securities Group.

We still haven't heard from Wells Fargo & Co./Wells Fargo Funding about its exclusionary list of mortgage banking firms - lenders that it will not buy loans from in the secondary market. As you might imagine the story we published Tuesday about the topic caused quite a stir in the industry plus a ton of traffic to the National Mortgage News website.

The former chief financial officer of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker on Tuesday pleaded guilty to covering up one of the largest mortgage frauds in U.S. history.

It would appear that rising interest rates are starting to affect new mortgage applications.