Paul Muolo

Although rumors abound that reserves in the Federal Housing Administration's capital cushion may turn negative sometime next year, delinquencies on government-backed loans — including those in the 90-day plus category — fell in the third quarter, according to brand new figures released by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Hurricane Sandy has been over for three days now but the aftermath is hitting many mortgage bankers and brokers hard in the greater New York metropolitan area which includes New Jersey and Connecticut.

Hurricane Sandy, which is bearing down on the mid-Atlantic all the way up to New England, is expected to delay thousands of mortgage closings on Monday and Tuesday at the very least.

Nationstar Mortgage bid roughly $2.907 billion for the origination and servicing assets of Residential Capital Corp., about $93 million shy of the top bid placed by Ocwen Financial and its partner Walter Investment Management Corp.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said he would consider limiting the size of the home mortgage deduction to help pay for an overall reduction in tax rates.

Almost a month ago MIAC held an auction on $8 billion of Government National Mortgage Association servicing rights, but the firm has yet to declare a winning bidder on the deal.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said Tuesday that The Cogsville Group LLC has purchased 94 Fannie Mae properties in Chicago as part of a REO pilot initiative.

Bank of America, as part of the national robo-signing settlement, is offering to wipe out 150,000 severely delinquent seconds liens for select customers.

PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust has agreed to buy $452 million of nonperforming whole loans from undisclosed sellers, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Fannie Mae is telling small lenders and servicers that it will cap the volume of loans they can sell to the government-sponsored enterprise based on their net worth and other factors, National Mortgage News has learned.

Nationstar Mortgage remains the "stalking-horse" bidder for ResCap's residential servicing portfolio, sources said. Ocwen Financial, Berkshire Hathaway and an unnamed hedge fund have also emerged.

Much has been written about the refi boom, but one avenue not explored deeply is the "multiple" refi client — the consumer who refinanced in the last couple of years who's again coming to the well.

Bank of Oklahoma in Tulsa this week hired former Fannie Mae executive Elliot Salzman as vice president in charge of correspondent lending.

PHH, the parent company of the nation's largest nonbank mortgage lender, reported a $57 million second-quarter loss and signaled its intention to reduce its presence in the correspondent lending channel.

Now it's time for Wells Fargo to slash its Realtor joint ventures that engage in mortgage banking activities.

Colony Capital LLC is one of the winning bidders on a Fannie Mae REO sale sponsored by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to bidders and other sources familiar with the matter.

Wells Fargo — the nation's largest funder of home mortgages through loan brokers — is calling it quits on wholesale lending, dealing yet another devastating blow to this struggling origination channel.

Last summer rumors were spreading that a private equity firm had amassed $1 billion in cash and was eyeing investments in mortgage banking firms. A year later it appears that no such deals were struck by the unnamed fund, but that hasn't stopped the talk about PE firms still looking at the sector.

Now that government-controlled Ally Financial has made official its exit from the warehouse lending arena, many firms are hoping to benefit from the bank's misery.

Loan brokers using table funding captured 9.9% of the origination market in the first quarter, a slight gain from 4Q when the sector had a 9.7% share, according to new figures compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.