Origination

The Mortgage Bankers Association wants the Federal Reserve to ease up on its compensation rules allowing production managers who originate loans to share in the profits of their branch office.

At the 2010 Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual convention I attended in Atlanta, some saw an attitude in the participants that had been absent in the past few years—confidence about the industry’s future.

Alex J. Pollock, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and frequent contributor to this page, is the most elegant writer on the mortgage business we have. A reader of his book Boom & Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (AEI Press) will be delighted to find quotations from Genesis, Aesop, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, financial analyst Walter Bagehot, the historian Paterculus, philosophers Kierkegaard and Santayana, and populists Will Rogers and Yogi Berra among its observations.

November was the best month of 2010 so far for the nation's private mortgage insurers in terms of new insurance written, while it was the second best for new applications. Furthermore, the cure/default ratio was back above 90% for the first time in three months, according to data from the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America.

Pebblebrook Hotel Trust of Bethesda, Md., late last week filed a $500 million shelf registration to sell additional shares of its common stock to the public, a sign that the hotel industry thinks the worst may be over for the sector.

The Eleventh Federal Home Loan District Cost of Funds Index declined by eight basis points between October and November, resuming its downward movement after one month where there was virtually no change.

MDA Lending Solutions launched a suite of mortgage fraud prevention software based on the recommendations that Fannie Mae gave the industry in the Loan Quality Initiative.

Large banks could end up pocketing higher profit margins on residential mortgages this year because of a rule from the Federal Reserve that restricts the pay of brokers and loan officers.

Bank of America on Monday morning agreed to pay $2.8 billion to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to resolve outstanding repurchase requests on loans Countrywide Financial Corp. sold to the GSEs.

Existing condominium sales in Florida were up 15% in the third quarter on a year-over-year basis, probably helped along by a 21% decrease in the price over the same period, according to data from Florida Realtors.There were 16,938 condos that changed hands in the third quarter, compared with 14,793 one year prior. The median sales price was $84,000 for the most recent period while last year it was $106,000.