Originations

I hiked what I call a small mountain in Imerovigli, Santorini, Greece. From the pool, it's about 900 or so steps down (and up again, puff, puff) zigzagging along the side of a cliff. When the steps finally end, there's a skinny little path that winds its way around the side of the hill and up to the top.

The warehouse commitment business is booming at People's United Bank of Connecticut which last fall hired industry veteran Paul Best from PNC Bank to run its operation.

State mortgage regulators should get ready for a swarm of consumer complaints against lenders this fall, a California lawyer who focuses on unfair lending practices and foreclosures warned.

First the good news: the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury hit yet another new low Wednesday afternoon, but many mortgage-related stocks experienced losses ranging from 2% to 8% in a morning selloff.

Fitch late Tuesday downgraded its ratings on Republic Mortgage Insurance and then withdrew entirely its coverage of the firm, saying its business likely will enter run-off status in the near future.

The debt ceiling debate not only brought the nation's economy to its knees, it also put a crimp in housing sales in the Nation's Capital, where activity had been climbing steadily for several months.

The huge sell-off in the stock market on Aug. 4 capped a week of declines in the Dow Jones Industrial Average which in turn helped to push the average contract rate on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage down another 8 basis points that week.

With Bank of America dangerously weighed down by costly acquisitions, its longstanding contention that it could jettison its troubled mortgage unit Countrywide must hold considerable appeal within the company's executive offices.

The reverse mortgage business is still a growth industry and becoming a Ginnie Mae-approved securitizer will allow One Reverse Mortgage LLC, San Diego, to grow with it, said its top executive.

Citigroup on Tuesday afternoon revealed that it recently hired Mark Danahy to head its residential origination division, which ranks among the top five in the nation.

The Federal Reserve's pledge on Tuesday afternoon to keep short-term rates low through 2013 should sustain relatively favorable mortgage market conditions for quite some time.

Sand Canyon Corp., a subsidiary of H&R Block that holds the remnants of the Option One Mortgage business, will pay a $10 million settlement to Massachusetts and institute a loan modification program providing an estimated $115 million of additional relief to consumers.

Federally insured banks, thrifts and credit unions have three times as many loan officers engaged in mortgage lending as state-licensed companies, according to new figures submitted to the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry.

Housing industry executives awoke on Monday to a world reshaped by the U.S. downgrade, but for their corner of the financial markets the pain is mostly psychological.

The historic downgrade of the U.S. government's credit rating is raising the question of whether similar actions may be in store for the country's largest banks, which also control a lion's share of the residential servicing business.

The president of the National Association of Independent Housing Professionals is seeking a meeting with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s ombudsman to discuss the issue of the agency going after loan brokers on buyback claims.

Every business to be successful has to have a written plan that needs to be followed and modified to fit changing conditions. That is not news—on more than one occasion, I have written articles on the topic.Not covered as much is the need to have a personal business plan put down on paper as a road map for growing your own sales.

Officials at CMG Mortgage Insurance Co., a joint venture between CUNA Mutual Group and PMI Group, are trying to reassure their credit union customers that the financial problems of the latter will have no affect on the JV and its ability to write new MI policies.

As the stock prices of the big banks cratered on Monday, particularly for Bank of America, pundits and industry observers began worrying that a second financial crisis was in the offing, including the possibility of the failure of a large financial institution.

When the stock market tanks – as it did Monday when the Dow dropped 635 points – it usually translates in the yield on the 10-year Treasury falling, which is exactly what happened. But this time around the decline resulted in the benchmark bond falling to a new all time low – 2.33%, which means mortgage bankers may be in for a boatload of refinancings.