THIS JUST IN: Penny Mac has hired Jeremy Collett, who ran secondary for Taylor Bean & Whitaker, to help the publicly traded vulture fund get its mortgage conduit off the ground. As one Wall Street veteran quipped to us about the hire: "The question is can you make any money doing correspondent business when you are not Wells, Citi or BoA?" We shall see. (TBW went bust this summer.) In the Monday edition of National Mortgage News we explore, in two different analytical pieces, the future of Penny Mac and whether the private-label business will ever return, the latter penned by our bureau chief, Brian Collins. To subscribe to NMN call: 800-221-1809...
Peter Paul, who years ago sold his alt-A shop Headlands Financial to GreenPoint Bank of New York, has created an "opportunity fund" to buy troubled mortgages. A source familiar with the matter said a former female senior managing director for Bear Stearns is working with the fund...
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has finally sold a $1 billion package of mortgage servicing rights belonging to the now-defunct Franklin Bank of Texas. However, for some strange reason, the agency won't identify the buyer. I hope I don't have to call my congressman...
We keep hearing reports about a fast-growing nonbank lender based in California called Stearns Lending. The company made a name for itself in the Western U.S. and has expansion plans for the East Coast and possibly New England. Launched in 1989, the company's founder and CEO is Glenn Stearns, who - you read it here first - was the winner of television's "The Real Gilligan's Island" contest. Folks, you can't make this stuff up...
COMMENTARY: Over the years I've shared coverage of HUD with NMN bureau chief Brian Collins. I've attended press conferences by such HUD secretaries as "Silent" Sam Pierce, Henry Cisneros, Andrew Cuomo, Mel Martinez, Alphonso Jackson and the new kid on the block, Shaun Donovan. This is usually how a "press" speech by a HUD secretary goes: he talks for five or ten minutes, hands over the reins to another senior HUD official, and departs because he has more important things to do than waste his time with a bunch of journalists. But the new guy, Donovan, is different. He spent two hours this past Thursday (along with FHA chief David Stevens) going over the FHA reserve fund - the one that has just $3.6 billion in cash left. He seemed engaged and knew plenty of details. He did say one thing that struck a chord with me: that some of the FHA's reserves are kept at the Treasury Department, which means Uncle Sam has access to that money when FHA isn't using it. It sort of reminded me of the Social Security "surplus" fund our nation has...
In attendance at the HUD/FHA press conference this past week: former HUD officials Howard Glaser and Bill Apgar...
The worst HUD secretary (in terms of actually saying something newsworthy) that I have ever covered? Hands down the answer is Alphonso Jackson who rarely said anything of importance but was pretty good at poking fun at his own baldness. Then again, during Mr. Jackson's reign, the FHA program had a market share of less than 3% compared to a near 30% today. And of course, Mr. Jackson left HUD under a bit of a cloud amid allegations of cronyism...
QUESTION OF THE WEEK: When former HUD chief Andy Cuomo runs for governor in New York against former House Banking Committee member Rick Lazio, who are you going to vote for? I know Mr. Cuomo is very popular with loan brokers and Wall Streeters. Drop me a line at
I'm now on
According to the Quarterly Data Report, wholesale production is down a bit but correspondent transactions are holding steady at almost 40% of all originations. To order the QDR drop an e-mail to
DATA NOTICE No. 1: Need soup-to-nuts statistics on the nation's top residential (and commercial) lenders and servicers? The new MortgageStats.com data product is ready. The user-friendly M-Stats is Web-based and incorporates both the Quarterly Data Report and our annual Mortgage Industry Directory. Among other things, it has annual rankings on the top 400 lenders and servicers, including breakdowns on retail, wholesale and correspondent - and news archives. There's contact info, too, and plenty of data on servicing. And here's the best part: you get quarterly updates. To see a sample send an e-mail to
DATA NOTICE No. 2: Even though we offer MortgageStats.com you can still subscribe to the Quarterly Data Report and Alternative Products QDR, spreadsheet products that provide readers with quarterly rankings on the nation's top lenders and servicers. There's also a companion product called the Midyear Data Report which offers half-year rankings on lenders, servicers and more. There is an Alt-QDR version of this as well. Again, shoot an e-mail to
EDITORIAL NOTE: The Washington bureau of NMN has moved to Northern Virginia, which means there are new telephone numbers for our staff. Executive editor Paul Muolo can be reached at 571-403-3851, bureau chief Brian Collins at 571-403-3837, Andras Malatinszky, director of online products at 571-403-3862, and Deartra Todd, data collection and sales at 571-403-3859. The mailing address is 4401 Wilson Blvd./Suite 910, Arlington, VA 22203.
THE LAST WORD: The average FICO score on new FHA borrowers are going through the roof.
