Servicing

Mortgage stocks on Tuesday posted gains as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose almost 300 points, and the yield on the rate-indicative 10-year Treasury rebounded.

Veterans are refinancing at a healthy clip these days as 2011 ends and loan limits on Department of Veterans Affairs guaranteed mortgages are slated to adjust downward in many counties across the nation.

It's that time of the year again: one in which financial services columnists wax poetic and ponder the Bailey Building and Loan and how if it existed today (it doesn't really) regulators would sue George Bailey (and Uncle Billy and 'Old Man' Potter since he sat on the board) for fraud to go after the D&O insurance.

Vertical Capital Markets Group, Irvine, Calif., this week launched a new fund that invests primarily in assets of residential performing loans secured by first mortgages or deeds of trust.

Home Savings of America in Little Falls, Minn., has scuttled - for now - its merger with Cornerstone Mortgage after one of the bank's private equity investors backed out of the deal, according to a memo provided to National Mortgage News.

American Home Mortgage Servicing, a company controlled by investor Wilbur Ross, recently explored buying the wholesale division of MetLife Home Loans, but for now has put the idea on hold, according to industry advisors familiar with the matter.

It looks like Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller won't be getting his Christmas wish this year. Miller, who is leading the settlement talks with the top five mortgage servicers, said earlier this month that the settlement should be reached by the holiday.

Fannie Mae's chief economist is warning that the United States has a 40% chance of slipping into a double-dip recession in 2012.

The Senate over the weekend added an increase in FHA premiums to the payroll tax bill, passing the measure by an overwhelming margin of 89-10.

Tom Palmer, a senior executive in the correspondent lending division of MetLife Home Loans, recently left the company, accepting a position with the privately held Freedom Mortgage Corp., Fishers, Ind., according to industry officials familiar with the matter.