Originations

Old Republic International Corp., Chicago, is planning to merge its private mortgage insurance business with another unit that is also in run-off, the consumer credit indemnity division and split them off from the parent company. The combination will operate under the name Republic Financial Indemnity Group Inc.

The average weekly rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage in Freddie Mac's survey rose above 4% for the first time since October of last year.

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.

Any insight into the future of the mortgage industry given by the speakers at the Regional Conference of Mortgage Bankers Associations in Atlantic City was hazy at best. Because almost every speaker at the first morning's general session agreed that if there is any one word defining what it is happening in the business right now it is uncertainty.

The latest round of vendor consolidation in the LOS sector saw three mortgage technology heavy hitters acquire competing or complementary software developers in a series of moves that shook up the landscape of origination technology.

If you are like me and regularly post on Facebook, Twitter, blog pages, etc., there are some days that I have "brain farts," days where I simply can't think of anything to post.

As Chris Larsen steps aside as Prosper Marketplace Inc.'s chief executive, the company — and the rest of the peer-to-peer lending industry Larsen helped create — has the opportunity to change its course and possibly even merge with one of the very banks it originally sought to displace.

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.

Sales of existing homes slipped 1% in February from the prior month on a seasonally adjusted basis, but rose 10% on a non-adjusted basis, according to new sales figures released Wednesday morning.

The title industry reported a drop of 1.5% in premiums written in 2011 over 2010, with the fourth quarter seeing a year-over-year decline of 6.5%, the American Land Title Association reported.

The acquisition of Bellwether Real Estate Capital LLC, Cleveland, by Enterprise Community Investment Inc., Columbia, Md., will allow the latter company to expand its activities to be a full service lender for community development activities, the executive who will head up the combination told National Mortgage News.

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.

Flagstar Bancorp Inc. increased its loss for the fourth quarter and 2011 by $4.2 million after revising a payment to settle claims regarding underwriting practices associated with loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

Sales consultants and trainers are not utilized enough - some not at all. There are many reasons why this occurs, oddly, the least of which is the cost factor. Most sales consultants and trainers can offer valuable, cost effective results through their input. In fact, it's one of the few outside resources a company or sales person can engage that will yield tangible results.

The Federal Housing Finance Board has finally quashed private transfer fees, all but putting an end to the controversial add-on that opponents maintain is an unwarranted tax on home buyers, now and long into the future.

It would appear that rising interest rates are starting to affect new mortgage applications.

Warehouse lenders still feel mostly optimistic about their prospects for the remainder of the year, but a recent spike in rates is something that could throw ice water on their outlook.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac finally gave lenders the green light on Monday that their automated underwriting systems are ready to process HARP 2.0 loans.

The New York Investment firm Prospect Capital Corp. has agreed to acquire a majority stake in specialty-finance company, First Tower Corp., for roughly $266 million.

In this week's National Mortgage News we published a story about an interesting warehouse lender called eWarehouseOne. EWO is interesting for several reasons, including the fact that it claims to have $3 billion in warehouse commitments, but many of the top warehouse managers that we've known for years have never heard of them.