Secondary

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.

In my opinion there is a significant disconnect in the jumbo mortgage between the primary market and the secondary market. What is fascinating is very little discussion or attention is being focused on this issue, at least from the perspective of what consumers want.

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.

The nation's megabanks -- Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America -- are cleaning up on the HARP 2.0 program, earning massive profits on the origination of these high LTV refinancings, according to a new report from Amherst Securities Group.

The National Credit Union Administration said it will receive roughly $5.25 million from HSBC for settling claims against the banking giant related to mortgage-backed securities it sold to five now defunct corporate credit unions.

The Federal Housing Administration has revamped a little used program for refinancing underwater conventional loans, and extended its "short refinance" program until the end of 2014.

A federal judge declined Tuesday to dismiss charges that Barclays Capital packed a collateralized debt obligation it sold to Eastern Financial Florida CU with junk, hastening the demise of the one-time $2.4 billion credit union, the biggest natural person credit union failure ever.

We still haven't heard from Wells Fargo & Co./Wells Fargo Funding about its exclusionary list of mortgage banking firms - lenders that it will not buy loans from in the secondary market. As you might imagine the story we published Tuesday about the topic caused quite a stir in the industry plus a ton of traffic to the National Mortgage News website.