Fixed income

The second quarter continues to shape up as a good one for bank mortgage lenders — and one ancillary service provider — that are benefiting from a spike in volume.

Despite a significant rise in first-mortgage production due to lower interest rates, profits from home lending in Citigroup's retail banking division fell slightly in the second quarter.

Builder MDC Holdings' preliminary numbers for net new home orders registered their highest quarterly increase in years, adding to signs of growing demand for housing.

Mortgage rates ticked up slightly this week with opposing trends in the stock and bond markets fighting for dominance, according to Freddie Mac.

Genworth Financial is marketing its stake in Genworth MI Canada in a possible last-ditch effort to save the long-delayed proposed acquisition by China Oceanwide.

A long list of "preparatory steps" means that any potential Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac initial public offerings are at least three to four years away, according to Raymond James.

First American Financial Corp. tumbled the most in nearly eight years amid concerns that a security flaw at the title insurer may have allowed unauthorized access to more than 885 million records related to mortgage deals going back to 2003.

Zillow's mortgage division experienced better customer demand in the first quarter than it expected, but its revenue was outweighed by expenses that led to a pretax loss of $9.6 million.

Lower rates hurt the value of Impac Mortgage Holdings' servicing rights and overall earnings in the first quarter, but they could help improve the company's second-quarter results.

Lower interest rates caused mortgage serving rights runoff plus a charge to the fair value of that portfolio and led to Ocwen Financial posting a first-quarter loss.