Capital markets

Optimal Blue, a mortgage technology provider owned by private equity firm GTCR, has acquired Comergence Compliance Monitoring.

Canada's big banks are pursuing wholesale banking, capital markets and select M&A opportunities across the border to hedge against a slowing mortgage market and other economic concerns on the home front.

The trend of putting ever-smaller pieces of the same commercial mortgages into multiple securitizations requires investors to be extra careful, and will inevitably make workouts of bad loans more complicated.

While consumers pay for mortgage insurance policies, carriers like Arch MI are forging new relationships with real estate agents and strengthening lender partnerships to reach the growing segment of millennial and low-to-moderate-income homebuyers.

One of the largest mortgage-bond investors says it would be a mistake for the federal government to relinquish control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac without first making major changes to the nation's housing-finance system.

Fannie Mae's involvement in institutional single-family rental financing bodes well for that market's potential growth, says Investability Real Estate's Chief Revenue Officer Dennis Cisterna.

As Nationstar Mortgage Holdings finalizes plans to change its name to Mr. Cooper, the nonbank lender and servicer is exploring options to part ways with Xome, the settlement services and real estate business it rebranded less than two years ago.

Mid America Mortgage has purchased a $2.7 billion portfolio of Ginnie Mae mortgage servicing rights that its subservicer, LoanCare, took possession of Tuesday.

Freddie Mac's serious delinquency rate dropped below 1% for the first time since 2008, lending credence to its efforts to expand credit access.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will continue to pursue opportunities for the government-sponsored enterprises to provide liquidity to the single-family rental market, despite opposition from mortgage and real estate industry groups.

No matter what form government-sponsored enterprise reform takes, Federal Housing Finance Agency officials are stressing that it should account for the fact that the GSEs' capital buffer will soon hit zero.

From a few employees at Hutchinson Credit Union who spent part of their day focusing on better servicing of local home mortgages, Member Mortgage Services has grown in just 13 years into a separate company with 37 employees.

Fannie Mae has made three selling guide changes aimed at helping the growing number of borrowers with student debt qualify for home loans, and may begin testing similar proposals related to this goal.

Royal Bank of Canada is the latest Canadian firm to explore a sale of bonds backed by uninsured residential mortgages.

Incenter Mortgage Advisors is accepting bids on behalf of an independent mortgage banker for a $326 million portfolio of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae mortgage servicing rights.

Vladimir Putin is taking a page from the U.S. housing market to boost homeownership. Call it Russia's Fannie Mae.

The Loan Syndications and Trading Association is appealing directly to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to exempt collateralized loan obligation managers from rules requiring "skin in the game" of deals.

Per-loan profits for nonbank lenders increased over 13% in 2016 from the previous year, driven by higher loan balances and increased revenue.

Returns from funds investing primarily in government-related mortgage securities were stronger in the first quarter than they were in the fourth quarter of 2016, but aren't quite as strong as in the first quarter of 2016.

Freddie Mac has obtained two new insurance policies under its Agency Credit Insurance Structure program.