Servicing

With profit margins on HARP 2.0 refinancings sky high, Wells Fargo & Co., is putting caps on the loan-to-value ratio it will accept from third-party lenders, National Mortgage News has learned.

Stonegate Mortgage, a fast-growing nonbank lender based in Indianapolis, has received a $25 million investment form private equity fund, Long Ridge Equity Partners, and plans to use the money to grow both its servicing portfolio and third-party lending channels.

In my opinion there is a significant disconnect in the jumbo mortgage between the primary market and the secondary market. What is fascinating is very little discussion or attention is being focused on this issue, at least from the perspective of what consumers want.

Home prices fell 3.2% during the second-half of last year, but as spring approaches values are bottoming out, according to a new report from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Global Research.

Executives at Reverse Mortgage Solutions, Spring, Texas, said the company is planning to move into the forward mortgage business. Currently, besides reverse mortgage lending and servicing, it is active in special servicing, default claims administration, real estate owned asset management and REO leasing.

Old Republic International Corp., Chicago, is planning to merge its private mortgage insurance business with another unit that is also in run-off, the consumer credit indemnity division and split them off from the parent company. The combination will operate under the name Republic Financial Indemnity Group Inc.

The average weekly rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage in Freddie Mac's survey rose above 4% for the first time since October of last year.

Administration officials are trying to get the Federal Housing Finance Agency to reconsider its resistance to principal reductions on loans purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told lawmakers Wednesday.

Any insight into the future of the mortgage industry given by the speakers at the Regional Conference of Mortgage Bankers Associations in Atlantic City was hazy at best. Because almost every speaker at the first morning's general session agreed that if there is any one word defining what it is happening in the business right now it is uncertainty.

Mortgage bank scorecards are changing an industry that has not yet found the right balance between efficient rating standards and regulated oversight.