Paul Muolo

The mortgage division of Wells Fargo & Co., funded $120 billion of new home mortgages in the fourth quarter – three-times the volume of its closest competitor JPM Morgan Chase, according to figures released Tuesday morning.

First, some good news: We understand that 350 MetLife Home Loan staffers are about to be made an employment offer. On top of that, other offers are being made to many of MLHL's high-performance loan officers. That's good news for the rank-and-file workers that make up this industry.

Who says retail lending is more expensive than wholesale production? Well, actually, JPMorgan Chase does. In its new earnings statement JPM notes that it spent an additional $82 million in 4Q (compared to 3Q) due to higher residential production costs: increased retail expenses and "enhanced" loan underwriting. JPM has been out of wholesale for two years now.

Although insurance conglomerate MetLife failed to unload its residential mortgage banking business, it is moving forward with a plan to sell its profitable warehouse lending division, according to industry officials briefed on the matter.

The nation's top five ranked residential funders, as a group, are continuing to lose production market share, but most of that loss can be attributed to one firm: Bank of America, which is deemphasizing mortgages.

As Wells Fargo goes, so goes the mortgage industry. Well, not exactly, but it needs to be pointed out once in a while just how much of a dominant player this megabank is in mortgage finance. In the third quarter it ranked first among all lenders, which is no secret, but in the correspondent channel it bought $41.1 billion of loans from other firms - almost triple its next closest competitor, Bank of America.

Capital Markets Cooperative, a secondary market specialist, is continuing to look at possible acquisitions, but is in no rush to sign on the dotted line.

The top cop at the Federal Housing Finance Agency is looking for an analytics firm that can advise the agency on what mortgage servicing rights are worth. But a big question about the contract remains unanswered: Why?

MetLife is continuing to stonewall on the future of its $1 billion warehouse lending business, leading to speculation in the market that the insurance company may wind up keeping the business after all.

Oh the indignity of it all: On Tuesday afternoon insurance giant MetLife -- the folks who market their business using Snoopy, Linus and Charlie Brown -- told 4,300 mortgage workers to take a hike. Then, the very next morning it publishes a statement saying another unit of the company bought a luxury rental apartment building in Chicago's North River neighborhood.

Total Mortgage Services, Milford, Conn., Wednesday named Neil Bader as its new national retail sales manager.

Banks and thrifts that play in the warehouse lending space had $29.8 billion of commitments on their books at the end of September, a 26% decline from the same period a year ago, according to new survey figures compiled by National Mortgage News.

Insurance giant MetLife, Inc. Tuesday afternoon shocked the market, saying it would exit the business of producing new “forward” residential loans through its residential lending division, MetLife Home Loans.

Bank of America's share price climbed to just over $6.50 Tuesday, a sign that investors somewhere are bottom feeding on this once proud banking franchise, one that shot itself in the foot (or is it head?) when it bought Countrywide Financial Corp. in 2008.

Bank of America is gearing up to sell large chunks of its residential servicing portfolio on a regular basis as it continues to whittle down its presence in the mortgage market, according to servicing advisors and investors who have been briefed on the bank's plans.

Investors holding at least $800 million of secured bonds in Residential Capital Corp. have organized in the event the mortgage firm's parent company, Ally Financial, throws the company into bankruptcy.

We heard an interesting one the other day and it goes like this: Supposedly, auditors were giving one bank servicer a hard time because foreclosure notaries that worked for the bank did not physically see their co-worker sign the documents.

My inbox was slammed by emails from readers who said "right on" to my commentary that the White House is (wrongly) using mortgage brokers as a whipping boy for the mortgage crisis. But some larger questions still loom: Does this White House even know what a loan broker is? I would guess not.

This week President Obama told the Senate to take a hike, installing former Ohio AG Richard Cordray as the new head of the CFPB via a recess appointment. But the real story here is that the White House continues to use loan brokers as the whipping boy for the housing/mortgage meltdown.

Almost hands down most mortgage trade groups and sectors of the business have shot down a "fee for service" concept to replace the existing GSE servicing compensation structure. But don't tell that to Lenders One, a nationwide cooperative of residential funders.