Loan Think

The politicians in Washington are outraged at the pay packages the head honchos at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been receiving. On Wednesday Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus introduced a bill that would “suspend the compensation packages” of these very same top executives.

About two months ago Fannie Mae bought roughly $70 billion of mortgage servicing rights from Bank of America – but has yet to confirm that the transaction ever took place. (B of A won't either.)

When most mortgage originators made their sales plan for 2011, they probably anticipated a year that was heavy on the purchase side, with rising interest rates keeping total volume down.

On Oct. 26, charges were expanded against four people accused of making illegal real estate deals that netted more than $11 million, and two defendants have been added to the amended complaint, according to the Fresno County District Attorney's Office.

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.

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.

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.

This blog, bringing President Truman’s dictum “the buck stops here” into the digital age, consists of comments and story feedback forms that come to me from readers of nationalmortgagenews.com and affiliated sites, with my own occasional comments in reply.

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.)