Paul Muolo

CitiMortgage, the nation's sixth largest residential wholesaler, Wednesday afternoon informed its loan brokers that it will cease table funding loans next week as it prepares to exit the channel.

Is the Obama Administration starting to listen to the mortgage industry - and in a good way? Well, don't throw a party quite yet, but two major mortgage developments this week suggest that perhaps the White House is starting to understand that you can't have a housing recovery without the cooperation of lenders and servicers that make the loans.

Ally Financial Inc. disclosed Tuesday that it will incur a $270 million charge in the fourth quarter - and an overall loss for the entire firm - due to what it calls "penalties" imposed by regulators and the states tied to "foreclosure related matters."

Once again the S&P/Case-Shiller index has found that home prices are creeping downward. But just how bad is it? As of November 2011, average home prices across the U.S. are back to where they were in 2003 - despite the lowest interest rates in half a century.

I'm a firm believer that the "power to buy" shapes home prices, except for when you're in the middle of a nasty housing recession. Of course, low rates don't hurt either. (And then there's underwriting standards.) Meanwhile, the new S&P home price index is out and no surprise there: values are still inching downward, albeit at what looks like a slower pace.

Banc of Manhattan Capital, Woodland Hills, Calif., entered the correspondent mortgage channel late last year, buying $50 million worth of product in the month of December.

Quicken Loans Inc., Detroit, funded $10.7 billion of home mortgages in the fourth quarter, a 14% gain from the same period a year ago.

Interactive Mortgage Advisors, Denver, is auctioning off a $157 million package of Freddie Mac bulk servicing rights for a client.

Facebook is about to go public. Whoopee! Here's how an IPO works: all the private equity firms that have been funding a startup's operations get to cash out, recovering their seed money and then some. I'm not a Facebook user, but I get the model, though my doubts about the company stem from this basic belief: what's to prevent a bunch of low-cost competitors from offering the same service?

Bank of America is ready to unload yet another multi-billion package of mortgage servicing rights, according to bidders and industry advisors familiar with the bank's plans.

I watched the State of the Union speech Tuesday and came away thinking no real "mortgage" surprises tonight except for two: Obama not using the word "mortgage broker" once, and the formation of the DOJ fraud task force on securitizing loans. But what about the "The State of the Mortgage Union"?

The answer to the above question is yes. But the qualifying question is: when? Indeed, there is a nascent hard money market out there run by mom and pop firms that are making loans at 8% to 12% using money given to them by wealthy investors.

Residential mortgages originated over the past two years are "among the best quality originations" on record, according to a new report from Lender Processing Services.

PHH Corp., which saw its CEO depart a few weeks ago, late Thursday named Charles Pizzi, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, to its board.

President Obama Tuesday night made a few specific references to the mortgage industry in his State of the Union speech, but never did he once use the phrase "loan broker" or try to paint these third-part salesmen as the evildoers of the housing crisis (as he has in the past.)

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said President Obama's decision to expand investigations into home lending and sales of MBS could stop settlement talks with the states over foreclosure practices.

Astoria Federal Financial Corp., one of the nation's largest thrifts, posted a net profit of $11.8 million in the fourth quarter, almost half of what it earned in the same period in 2010.

Delinquencies on mortgages controlled by Freddie Mac rose to 3.58% in December, the highest reading in nine months for the GSE, and a sign that it likely will continue to post operating losses in the immediate quarters ahead.

GNMA chief Ted Tozer has been trying in vain to get more mortgage firms to issue MBS, but Wells Fargo & Co. continues to increase its grip on the government market.

Citigroup recently told its mortgage correspondents that going forward it will only buy "low risk" loans. What's a low risk loan, you ask? Answer: any mortgage that has an almost zero chance of going south.