Origination

The Senate this week passed a six-month extension of the National Flood Insurance Program and supporters are hopeful the House will act quickly to prevent any disruption in the issuance of new policies.

Thanks to a growing refinancing boom that gathered steam in the third quarter, small mortgage banking companies benefited as their profits per loan more than doubled during the period.

PHH Corp., Mt. Laurel, N.J. has priced an add-on offering of $100 million of debt, to replace the $250 million debt offering it cancelled on Dec. 2 due to market conditions.

MRN Cubed, a mortgage outsourcing and consulting firm and the parent company of e-mortgage technology vendor SigniaDocs, acquired default management workflow vendor DepotPoint.

Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp.'s delinquent loan inventory declined by over 4,000 loans between October and November, while the amount of primary new insurance written remained consistent for the third consecutive month.

Finding new customers and getting more business from current ones are the top two business pressures facing mortgage bankers today, according to the results of a survey taken by Comergence during the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual convention in Chicago.

The average weekly 30-year mortgage rate for the sixth week in a row is not far from record lows and pretty close to 4%, according to Freddie Mac.

Think about it - there are very few occupations where you are all things to all people.

Wells Fargo & Co. – as the industry is quite aware – is a dominant force in both residential production and servicing, but it continues to tower above all competitors in the GNMA MBS market.

The mortgage industry is having growing concerns about a payroll tax relief measure that would raise GSE guarantee fees by 12.5 basis points, using the additional revenues to pay for other government programs.