Origination

What thoughts should guide ongoing Congressional consideration on housing finance? Let's start with this one: "It is increasingly clear that the Fed and the U.S. government's entwinement with the housing market is one of the greatest economic distortions on earth" (as the Lex Column of the Financial Times wrote).

A slim majority of Americans want the federal government to do more to help homeowners with troubled mortgages, according to a recent survey conducted by Yahoo Real Estate.

One of the joys of living in South Florida is spending New Year's Day at the beach. This year when walking along the shore I came across a sand crab making its way toward the water. My grandchildren were fascinated by the fact that the crab didn't walk forward, but sideways. Every time my grandchildren got close, the crab stuck its head into its shell, thereby making no progress at all.

Redwood Trust is readying a $415 million jumbo MBS deal backed predominately by loans sold to the REIT by First Republic Bank and PHH Mortgage, according to a presale report on the deal prepared by Fitch Ratings.

Citigroup Inc. appears to have abandoned its plan to sell its consumer lending unit -- which also makes real estate loans -- until the economy improves and it can fetch a better price for it, according to Fitch Ratings Inc.

Tree.com has obtained a $100 million warehouse line of credit from Credit Suisse First Boston Mortgage Capital LLC, the second $100 million line the company has obtained in the past 90 days, said its chairman and chief executive Doug Lebda.

The nation's top five ranked residential funders, as a group, are continuing to lose production market share, but most of that loss can be attributed to one firm: Bank of America, which is deemphasizing mortgages.

Sabal Financial Group, a financial services management firm, has acquired a $204 million portfolio of performing and nonperforming loans from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Average weekly mortgage rates continued their "How low can they go?" trend in Freddie Mac's primary market survey, declining slightly to another round of record lows.

So you've written this really cool article. You want to world to know about it. But just the thought of "getting it out there" is overwhelming.