Paul Muolo

The Prestwick Mortgage Group is selling a $406 million package of GNMA mortgage servicing rights for an undisclosed mortgage banking firm.

FBR Capital Markets late Friday said it has halted coverage of The PMI Group, Walnut Creek, Calif., the nation's second largest MI firm.

Did anyone really think that PMI was going to survive as an ongoing entity in the mortgage insurance space? Probably not. In late October Arizona regulators took over the rest of the company and PMI's stock was halted on the NYSE.

Consumers continue to be pessimistic about home prices – with many saying that values still have further to fall – but they also believe, overwhelmingly, that now is a good time to buy.

For the past week we've been hearing rumors that Ocwen might close the Houston office space/platform it inherited when it bought Litton Loan Servicing early in the fall. But not so, says Ocwen senior vice president and general counsel Paul Koches. "We are keeping all the space," he told us. That's good news for the employees who occupy a whole office building in the city.

Okay, so Redwood Trust – the only firm to issue a jumbo MBS in forever – earned a scant $1 million in 3Q. But the real news is that it bought $405 million of jumbos from other lenders – its largest quarterly purchase number in who knows how long.

Selene Finance, a specialty servicer/loan modification company controlled by Lewis Ranieri, has hired Larry Litton Jr., and a handful of top managers from Litton Loan Servicing, Houston, according to servicing executives that have done business with the firm.

Redwood Trust, the only firm to publicly issue jumbo MBS the past two years, earned just $1 million in the third quarter, but its acquisition of nonconforming product in the secondary market jumped by 166%.

Ally Financial Corp. this week announced what it calls "modest" layoffs in its correspondent lending division, but declined to specify how many workers were cut.

Mortgage and banking regulators have a job to do: keep our financial institutions safe from fraud, mismanagement and chicanery. But where in their mandate does it say: Hey, let's make things even tougher for them. What am I talking about? Answer: mortgage servicing.

The government controlled Freddie Mac posted a net loss of $4.4 billion in the third quarter, blaming the performance on higher credit costs, and declining interest rates, which impacted the fair value of its investment in derivatives.

When word leaked out a few weeks ago that Bank of America had lost one of it top residential loan officers to a competitor, it had a message for the troops: we value your work and want to keep you.

The U.S. government Wednesday morning reported that – surprise – the home ownership rate actually rose last quarter. What? That's correct. (See the full story on the National Mortgage News website.)

New residential loan applications grew fractionally for the week ending October 28, despite continued rock bottom interest rates, according to figures compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

States that rely on judicial foreclosures to clear delinquent loans are swamped with large inventories of problem homes with the overall process taking six months longer than in non-judicial states, according to a new report from Lender Processing Services, Jacksonville, Fla.

Annaly Capital Management, the nation's largest mortgage investing REIT, posted a $922 million net loss in the third quarter, citing a flattening yield curve and faster prepayment speeds.

Two new reports come to the same conclusion about the outlook for home remodeling: it's an ugly market without much hope of improving anytime soon.

The U.S. Department of Justice Tuesday sued Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp. and two executives — including founder Jim Hodge — accusing them of fraudulent lending practices tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in government-backed loans.

If the Federal Reserve launches a new round of MBS buying it could cause spreads between mortgages and Treasuries to tighten — as would be expected — but it also would spur returns for broker/dealers.

Within the next few days Freddie Mac will release its third quarter results. Could it possibly turn a net profit even after it pays its loan sharkish dividend to the U.S. Treasury? We will know shortly, but consider this: