Stonegate Mortgage Corporation has announced the opening of a new regional operations center in Oak Brook, Ill. that will focus on loan servicing and originations. Leading the new office will be Stonegate Mortgage’s Paul Wyner, senior vice president of Third Party Origination who will be on-site and joined by two operations managers: Arthur Lewis, who will be responsible for correspondent lending operations, and Laurie Veasy, who will be responsible for Loan Fulfillment Operation –Underwriting and Closing.Click to continue

The StoneHill Group has grown significantly this year as mortgage lenders look for experienced partners to help balance workload and comply with new industry regulations being enacted by the CFPB. The firm announced the hiring of two additional critical positions to help manage growing demand for their services with the additions of Michael Atwell and Kristin Belcher.Click to continue

United Guaranty Corporation has named Brian Gould chief operating officer (COO). Gould, who joined the company in 1999, now oversees underwriting, claims, loss mitigation, customer support, and business analytics, as well as the company’s service operations and enterprise services groups. Gould also has functional oversight of these areas for United Guaranty’s international businesses.Click to continue

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (T-TN), a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, has submitted a letter to six federal agencies, urging federal banking regulators to simplify and synchronize underwriting standards for new mortgage lending rules to avoid permanently regulating the private sector out of the housing finance business. The qualified residential mortgage (QRM) being implemented under the Dodd-Frank Act currently exempts loans sold to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration.Click to continue

Genworth Financial Inc. has announced that Michael Derstine joined the company as chief risk officer (CRO) for its Genworth U.S. Mortgage Insurance (USMI) unit. Derstine previously worked at Republic Mortgage Insurance Company (RMIC), where he held several leadership roles, most recently as capital deployment group manager.Click to continue

The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) has filed suit in Federal District Court in Kansas against JP Morgan Securities as successor-in-interest to Washington Mutual Bank, alleging violations of federal and state securities laws in the sale of $2.2 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to three corporate credit unions. Other defendants include WaMu Capital Corporation, Long Beach Securities Corporation, and WaMu Asset Acceptance Corporation.Click to continue

U.S. Sen.Click to continue

The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) has filed suit in Federal District Court in Kansas against JP Morgan Securities and Bear Stearns & Company, alleging violations of federal and state securities laws in the sale of $3.6 billion in mortgage-backed securities to four corporate credit unions. NCUA’s suit—the largest the agency has filed to date—alleges that Bear Stearns made misrepresentations in connection with the underwriting and subsequent sale of mortgage-backed securities to U.S.Click to continue

Despite growing signs that the housing market is starting to recover from the depression-like conditions of the past few years, first-time homebuyers don’t seem to be benefiting from that recovery. According to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulseTracking Survey results, the first-time homebuyer share of home purchases fell to 34.7 percent in October. That was not only down from the 37.1 percent share seen as recently as June, but also the lowest first-time homebuyer share ever recorded in the HousingPulse survey.Click to continue

Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS) and Equifax have announced that lenders can automatically order Equifax Verifications of Employment (VOEs) through the LPS Loan Quality Gateway, expediting the loan origination process. The LPS Loan Quality Gateway is an open platform that provides the integrations, data management, decisioning and workflow management required for current and emerging loan quality programs. Through this platform, lenders can automate the ordering of Equifax VOEs to reduce the time and errors associated with manual VOE-ordering processes.Click to continue