Originations

The California law firm Kassas Law has started a prelitigation service to help homeowners who have trouble securing loan modifications from banks.

Hudson City Bancorp, one of the largest correspondent lenders in the Northeast, shed roughly $8.6 billion of MBS in the first quarter as it moved to reduce its interest risk at the demand of regulators.

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Wells Fargo Home Loans is telling its correspondent lenders and brokers they cannot vary the compensation they pay their loan officers based on the mortgage product.

Lender Processing Services' "first look" report found that the national monthly and yearly delinquency rates continued to decline in March.

BlackRock Inc. has named a new global head of real estate to oversee both debt and equity investment products.

Sales of existing single-family homes rose 4% in March on a seasonally adjusted annual basis, signaling a lackluster start to the spring home buying season.

Borrowers rushing to beat an FHA premium hike and a slight increase in refinance applications helped boost seasonally adjusted application volumes overall by 5.3% during the week ending April 15, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Wells Fargo & Co., which dominates the nation's residential lending market, saw its home fundings tumble by 34% to $84 billion in the first quarter as higher rates took a bite out of refinancings.

New York Community Bancorp in the first quarter partially offset a slowdown in residential lending with more fees from New York apartment-building owners who repaid loans early.

The Federal Reserve Board this week began soliciting public comments on a proposed rule that would give mortgage lenders two ways to show they have sufficiently vetted a consumer's "ability to repay" a mortgage.

A pilot program designed to avoid Home Equity Conversion Mortgage delinquencies is gaining track among seniors in need of help at about the same time pending legislation calls for cuts of all funding for federally mandated reverse mortgage counseling.

RE/MAX says that home sales jumped nearly 39% in March and that almost all of the 54 metropolitan markets it tracks experienced double-digit gains compared to February.

Refinancings caused loan production to spike in the fourth quarter but independent residential lenders experienced a 24% decline in how much they earned per loan, according to a new report from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 184 guaranteed American Indian mortgage has passed $2 billion in loans extended.

Whether the U.S. is in an economic recovery or not is debatable. But things are easing for many small businesses; even mortgage originators with a purchase orientation are seeing signs of better times ahead.

Moody's Investors Service this week downgraded its ratings on $8.2 billion of prime jumbo MBS issued by Wells Fargo & Co., while affirming some of its ratings.

Mortgage lenders issued $24.1 billion of Government National Mortgage Association-backed MBS in March, an 8% decline from February, and a sign of slowing volume in the FHA/VA market.

Auction.com plans to put out for bid at least two commercial real estate loan packages per month for the next three months totaling more than $1.86 billion.

Although total originations fell by about 13% last year, mortgage bankers funded almost $38 billion of interest-only mortgages in 2010, an 8% increase from the prior year, according to figures compiled by National Mortgage News.