Paul Muolo

Even though mortgage bankers are still enjoying the steepest yield curve in years, lenders' average profit per loan fell 40% year over year in the first quarter, to $606, according to figures released Tuesday by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Tom Wind, chief executive of Aurora Loan Services, once the premier mortgage banking arm of Lehman Brothers, is expected to step down from the lender/servicer this summer, according to officials familiar with the situation.

In two weeks the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will take final bids on the $23 billion residential servicing portfolio of the failed AmTrust Bank of Cleveland, but there is little industry chatter about which investor might win the package.

Essent Guaranty, which wrote its first mortgage insurance policy in the second quarter, said it has lined up $100 million of fresh capital, bringing its total equity commitments to $600 million.

Subprime residential lending is making a comeback of sorts, except that none of the firms funding the loans call the product "subprime." There's another catch: loan volumes are extremely small. But the profit margins are through the roof.

Federal Housing Administration mortgage volume could get a boost from regulatory reform, because loans insured by government agencies are fully exempt from the bill's risk-retention requirement.

Federal Housing Administration mortgage volume could get a boost from regulatory reform, because loans insured by government agencies are fully exempt from the bill's risk-retention requirement.

Freddie Mac dismissed its executive vice president of operations and technology, Mike Perlman, on Tuesday as part of a company reorganization, according to officials close to the matter.

Jumbo mortgage lending is beginning to show nascent signs of a recovery, or at least a stabilization of sorts.

A year ago most mortgage warehouse lenders had their nonbank customers over a barrel when it came to terms on new lines of credit. The warehousers' profit margins were steep and most nondepositories were happy just to have a lender. Today, the terms aren't a whole lot better, but mortgage bankers are resting a bit easier for two main reasons: more banks are entering the warehouse sector, and commitment volumes are on the rise.

Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp. will auction off a portfolio of mortgage servicing rights tied to $1 billion of loans controlled by Freddie Mac.

The regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Thursday morning said it is directing the troubled GSEs to move the trading of their stocks to the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board market while declining to answer questions about a reverse stock split.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has once again pushed back the auction deadline on the $23 billion AmTrust servicing portfolio, National Mortgage News has learned.

Although there are signs of life in the wholesale/broker sector, originations through this somewhat controversial production channel hit an all-time low in the first quarter, according to figures compiled by National Mortgage News.

A funny thing happened on the way out of the housing bubble: with home prices crashing in several once-red-hot housing markets, it appears that Americans now owe less on their homes than they did last year.

BB&T Corp.'s Liberty Mortgage Corp. is exiting the wholesale channel, a move that will lead to the banking company ramping up its correspondent and warehouse lending divisions.

Bob Howard, a mortgage industry veteran who has worked in both the prime and nonprime sectors, is working with a nonbank lender to enter the jumbo market.

One statistic tells the real story of today's mortgage market: Almost every single loan originated today is bought by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or winds up as collateral for a bond guaranteed by the Government National Mortgage Association.

PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust is offering a $98 million pool of loans to investors, according to market sources.

"Rep and warranties can be fought to a degree," says one mortgage banker, but "if ... fraud was involved there's nothing the originator can do" to fight an investor's repurchase claim.