Origination

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late this week unveiled an interactive database with answers to consumers' frequently asked questions about financial products.

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.

I am not ashamed to say it; I still read Blondie every day in my local newspaper. And a little over a week ago I came across a strip which drives home the point that empty phrases do not motivate people.

Loan origination systems have in many cases largely been striving to keep up with inordinate demands for functionality during a time when resources are scarce by finding partners to help them extend their abilities.

Wells Fargo & Co. - the nation's largest buyer of closed loans outside of the GSEs - has thrown down the gauntlet on the correspondent market, creating an "exclusionary list" of 88 firms that it will no longer buy loans from. How are lenders reacting so far? With a mixture of fear of being on the list and an indifferent "so what?"

Sequoia Mortgage Trust has in the works another private label securitization backed by recently originated jumbo loans, a type of transaction that continues to be rare in the post-downturn market.

Mortgage bankers issued $28 billion of Government National Mortgage Association MBS in February, down 7% from the prior month, according to new figures released Thursday.

While the multifamily market might be the hot commercial real estate sector right now, Fitch Ratings, New York, sees a number of clouds on the horizon, including a loosening of lender underwriting standards and the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

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.