Origination

Getting licensed to be a mortgage loan officer is simple – or so some readers have told us. But we’ve also heard stories about failure rates in some states approaching 40%.

It appears that higher premiums are starting to have a profound effect on the FHA’s “streamline” refinancing program.

Residential Capital Corp./GMAC earned $217 million in the first quarter, but its residential originations plummeted by 53%, as the near-closing of its correspondent division weighed heavily.

For every positive step taken by lenders and the law enforcement community to stop people from scamming the system, it seems that fraudsters are one step ahead, experts conceded at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Fraud Issues Conference in Phoenix this week.

Changes made to the Obama administration's flagship mortgage refinance program, HARP, have boosted profits at the nation's largest banks at the expense of homeowners and U.S. taxpayers, according to mortgage experts testifying at a Senate hearing this week.

The Federal Open Market Committee said Wednesday that the central bank will maintain its reinvestments of principal payments from agency mortgage-backed securities and debt holdings into new agency MBS.

Buoyed by stronger credit quality and higher mortgage banking income, Lakeland Financial of Warsaw, Ind., reported record first-quarter income of $8.6 million, up 45% from a year earlier.

The Mortgage Bankers Association is supporting a Senate bill to streamline the Home Affordable Refinancing Program which relieves lenders of repurchase risk when they refinance underwater GSE borrowers.

Freddie Mac purchased $42 billion of mortgages from its seller/servicers in March, its strongest acquisition month since the refinancing boom of late 2010.

Tongues are clucking in the industry about the death of the ‘transitory’ license with many nonbank loan officers believing that their depository brethren are at a financial disadvantage.