Paul Muolo

Before Barack Obama was elected president residential mortgage debt in the U.S. was actually larger than outstanding Treasury debt. At yearend 2009 home mortgage debt peaked at $10.1 trillion. Today that number is a $1 trillion lower - according to figures compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.

Nationstar Mortgage and an affiliate company, Newcastle Investment Corp., have agreed to acquire roughly $63 billion in mortgage servicing rights from Aurora Bank FSB, a subsidiary of the bankrupt Lehman Bros.

Bank of America issued just $7.9 billion of GNMA-backed MBS in the fourth quarter, a 71% plunge from the same period in 2010, according to new figures compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.

MountainView Capital Group on Monday said it recently brokered the sale of 7,100 nonperforming second liens with an unpaid principal balance of $403 million.

Is outsourcing American jobs -- white collar jobs, no less -- evil? Is it a bad thing to set up a servicing acquisition company in the Caymans because by doing so you can avoid paying both income taxes to your executives and corporate income tax?

Here's a taste of a story appearing in the Monday edition of National Mortgage News: Brian Simon, CEO of Caliber Funding, in a recent interview predicted that his company could grow originations by threefold or fourfold in 2012.

It's all about opportunity. Bank of America and Ally Financial recently tossed their correspondent lending divisions overboard. On the surface, some may look at these exits and shout, "The sky is falling." But the smart money knows that such departures spell opportunity.

Wells Fargo & Co. is in the market with a $270 million package of nonperforming residential mortgages, according to investors and investment bankers who play in the space.

Viewpoint Bank, Plano, Texas ended the year with $1.15 billion of warehouse commitments on its books, a 53% gain over 12 months.

Home Loan Servicing Solutions - an entity whose sole mission in life is to buy servicing rights from Ocwen Financial Corp. - finally went public this week, raising roughly $186 million in cash.

Right after I graduated college I read an existential novel called 'The Woman in the Dunes' by Japanese writer Kobo Abe. The story is a bit fuzzy in my mind now, but it centers around an entomologist name Niki who gets stuck in a sandy quarry with a widow who is employed by local villagers to dig sand for sale. Niki tries to escape the sand quarry but can't and faces an eternity of digging sand.

Fannie Mae saw its secondary market purchases fall by 20% in January while its cross town competitor, Freddie Mac, experienced a 10% gain, a sign that, perhaps, the Bank of America "problem" could be affecting the business of the two GSEs.

In the end, MetLife Inc. wasn't crazy about the residential finance business, but it had a darn good quarter origination wise, according to final survey figures the company provided to National Mortgage News.

Residential loan applications fell 0.3% for the week ending February 24 while refinancings continued to dominate the business, according to new figures compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

We keep hearing the same chorus week after week from politicians and regulators: we want private capital to return to the mortgage business. In a nutshell, they want private investors to play the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - that of buying and guaranteeing loans.

Fannie Mae, in a new SEC filing, says that in late January it cut off Bank of America from selling most types of loans to the GSE because of "delays" by the lender in making good on outstanding buyback requests.

Mortgage bankers funded roughly $404 billion of home mortgages in the fourth quarter, a 13% sequential gain, but a 25% decline from the same period in 2010, according to final survey figures compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.

The general media – TV especially – sometimes avoids letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Indeed, crimes of greed and stupidity were committed on Wall Street and by dozens of nonprime retail loan officers and brokers who upstreamed billions of dollars in questionable loans to Wall Street for securitization.

eWarehouseOne, Newport Beach, Calif., is exploring the idea of financing the purchase of mortgage servicing rights, a business that has been mostly dormant during the housing crisis.

According to figures released Tuesday morning, home values are still in the tank, with three key S&P price indices sinking in the fourth quarter to their lowest level since the housing crisis began seven years ago.