There is news out that Brian Brooks, general counsel for Fannie Mae, will be nominated as deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Brooks worked at California bank OneWest with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Seeing a trend?

Vendor news

While the LOS is a critical system to a mortgage lender, there are other important supporting systems that allow companies to more effectively originate and service loans. Understanding how satisfied lenders are with these supporting systems - Product and Pricing Engines, Hedging and Servicing Systems - and what factors are most important in choosing a system gives critical feedback to the industry. STRATMOR is conducting a study to better understand the needs of mortgage lenders regarding supporting technology systems. This survey is free to take and summary results will be provided to participants.  If you are interested in taking this 10-minute survey, click here.

Mortgage document preparation vendor International Document Services, Inc. (IDS), announced it has incorporated a new document preview feature into its integration with LendingQB's cloud-based loan origination solution (LOS). The feature allows LendingQB users to preview mortgage documents, such as the Loan Estimate or Closing Disclosure, before they are submitted to fulfillment, enabling lenders to spot and correct errors prior to the creation of the final document. Preview docs are displayed as a PDF, the same format in which the final document package is delivered, but with a "SAMPLE" watermark, ensuring that the preview document cannot be mistaken for the final document.

To offer seamless title services built within its LOS, Fidelity National Title has completed a cooperative integration with LendingQB, provider of loan origination technology solutions. This partnership centralizes title quoting and ordering within one user interface in the LendingQB LOS. By keeping the user inside the LOS environment, the time and cost to close the origination is reduced to meet the closing deadline.

Dart Appraisal has been named an approved Appraisal Management Company (AMC) by Ditech Financial LLC. It will immediately begin providing residential valuation services to all Ditech's mortgage origination channels.   

ReverseVision, provider of software and technology for the reverse mortgage industry, announced that the Northwest's Kiel Mortgage has chosen RV Exchange (RVX) loan origination software (LOS) to power its home-equity conversion mortgage (HECM) division. "Reverse mortgages are truly an emerging market; it's a specialized product that requires dedicated attention and care," stated Co-founder Laura Kiel. "Thanks in part to our education efforts, we're seeing a dramatic, positive shift in the perception of reverse mortgages in our area."

Optimal Blue announced that it has partnered with BankingBridge to enhance the co-branded marketing media that the web-based vendor provides to loan officers and Realtors. Through this integration, BankingBridge can offer participating lenders a simple, precise, affordable, and compliant way to display accurate, real-time interest rates with multiple media platforms, thus improving efficiency for lenders and, ultimately, increasing customer satisfaction.

Indecomm Global Services, provider of business process as a service (BPaaS), software as a service (SaaS) technology, learning products for the mortgage industry, Advanced Data, and a mortgage industry leader in enterprise-wide fraud prevention and enhanced verifications; announced a technology integration alliance. The partnership enables mutual clients to digitally use tax return transcripts through IncomeGenius, Indecomm's web-based income analysis platform using Advanced Data's Income Tax Verification (ITV) service. That data is then combined with other borrower income data from the OCR capabilities in IncomeGenius to create a complete income analysis. For more information contact Linda Bomar, VP of Sales.

Waterstone Mortgage has engaged NAHREP Consulting Services, the consulting arm of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP), to help it to more effectively serve Hispanic homebuyers. With this new partnership, NCS will work closely with the Waterstone Mortgage leadership team to craft sound strategies that will resonate with Hispanic prospective homebuyers.

Mortgage marketing firm, Best Rate Referrals, announced the launch of Mortgage Advisor, a feature-rich website that will make it easier for consumers to navigate the mortgage financing process and connect with lenders. The new website will serve as a one-stop mortgage financing shop that matches consumers with lenders that best meet their financing needs. With Mortgage Advisor, consumers can access a variety of loan products and lenders and a variety of informational resources and tools including mortgage calculators, rate comparisons, expert advice, lender ratings and reviews at no cost to the consumer.

HMDA changes are currently scheduled to roll out in seven months, and I asked Jonathan Corr, President and CEO of Ellie Mae, for an update. "HMDA readiness is on everyone's mind and Ellie Mae is helping our clients get ready in number of ways.

"Specifically, we have Encompass Enhancements, an Encompass 17.2 enabled collection of the new dataset required for loans with actions taken in 2017, 2018 and beyond in a single system of record. A HMDA Loan Application Register compliment with the new guidelines published in the CFPB rule and supplemental Filing Instruction Guides (FIGs) are featured in this solution, as well as substantial automation to reduce lender processing time and risk in creating reports. Also included is the optional expanded Demographic Information Addendum. Upcoming releases will include support reporting of repurchased loans, additional data quality validations and the ability to collect and report borrower expanded demographic information to the GSE's. 

"We have a Webinar Series of complimentary on-demand webinars on HMDA that include leading compliance and legal experts in various discussions about the regulation and what lenders need to be doing to be prepared in the years to come. We're offering HMDA compliance training as a complete education solution including an online learning management system and the practical application of HMDA, including a functional understanding of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and Reg C.

"Ellie has a downloadable white paper to understand the upcoming HMDA changes and how to ensure continued compliance success has been published, and a Brief on upcoming HMDA changes as a quick and essential primer on how to prepare and what Ellie Mae is doing to get lenders ready in advance. 

Finally, our fully developed Compliance Center offers more information about HMDA changes, Ellie Mae's regulatory support, FAQ's and more.

Capital markets

In selling news, for its 10th nonperforming loan sale, Fannie Mae chose three winning bidders for 3,400 loans with an unpaid principal balance of $581 million. The group was divided among three pools. MTGLQ Investors, Goldman Sachs, won the first pool, Igloos Series III Trust, Balbec Capital, won the second pool, and Rushmore Loan Management Services took the third pool. The transaction is expected to close in late July. MTGLQ Investors LP, was a winning bidder of a Fannie Mae auction for the eighth time.

Turning to the economy, what has recent data told us about the economy, and therefore rates? The numbers tell us that the U.S. economy is doing darned good. U.S. data releases revealed that most labor market indicators are positive for the month of May, as unemployment fell to 4.3% and job growth continues its trend of slight growth each month. Various statistics such as U.S. home prices, real disposable income, and real consumer spending all saw growth throughout the past months, and manufacturing conditions are continuing to improve at a significant pace. Though vehicle sales dipped somewhat, the positive income and spending growth mentioned prior should continue to support the market. As the U.S. international trade gap grew to -$47.6 billion in June, trade in Q2 looks as though it will have a small negative impact on the quarter's GDP growth. One thing to take note of is the high chance that the Federal Funds Rate increases 25 basis points soon, as recent inflation was lower than expected.

As opposed to last week's dearth of news, this week we have plenty of scheduled announcements in the United States - including the Fed meeting results - although there isn't anything today. Tomorrow we jump in with some gauge of small business optimism and a collection of Producer Price Index numbers telling us about inflation. Wednesday, we follow that up with some Consumer Price Index numbers, the MBA's read on last week's applications, Retail Sales, and the FOMC rate decision. On Thursday, the 15th, we'll have some import and export price figures, the usual weekly initial jobless claims, the Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization duo, the NAHB Housing Market Index. Friday, we can all look forward to the Housing Starts and Building Permits couplet, as well as a slurry of University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers.

We begin the week with interest rates not much changed versus the end of last week. The 10-year is yielding 2.21% with agency MBS prices are down a tick or two.

Jobs and Announcements

"Work smarter, not harder. Business shouldn't be complicated, which is why Nationstar Mortgage is focused on being easier to do business with and helping our correspondents save money. To prove our continued commitment to the correspondent channel and our business partners, we have removed most overlays - with plans to do more! Most recently, we announced tax transcripts are no longer required on wage earning borrowers. Additionally, we're one of the first investors to roll out FNMA Day 1 Certainty without overlays! Just like our jeans-day everyday corporate policy, we are trying to relax the "dress code" when it comes to our credit box. Watch for upcoming enhancements around improved government loan pricing and our expansions on manual underwrite eligibility! Questions or comments? Reach out to us on the 'Contact Us' tab of our website. We always appreciate the opportunity to speak with our valued partners."

Plaza Home Mortgage, Inc. is currently looking to grow its sales team in the state of New Jersey. Management has a rare opportunity for an Account Executive role that will have access to existing clients and prospects. They are looking for a knowledgeable and motivated individual that can add to their book of business with Plaza. Join a growing team with a very competitive compensation plan, some of the best training in the industry, real-time marketing support and a regional operations center! For more information on this opportunity, please contact Deborah Robertson, Sales Manager (917-680-6505). Plaza is an EEOC employer and follows all laws relating to fair employment.

"It should happen by next Monday." At the Money Source (TMS) they have a joke in the office when something will never get done by a counterparty, they say, "It will happen next Monday." This came from a subservicing relationship where they had a request and inevitably the answer was always the same..."it should happen by next Monday." Well, after years of those Mondays never happening, TMS management took matters into its own hands and brought servicing in-house in 2015. Since doing so, TMS has seen their delinquencies significantly decline, have built a best in class technology for servicing oversight -- called SIME -- and have recently launched TMS's subservicing to bring this offering to lenders who are tired of dealing with sub servicers pushing off requests to the next Monday that never comes. To learn more about TMS's amazing subservicing platform, go to www.getSIME.com.

"TPOs looking to branch out, product-wise, might ought to consider Section 184 loans. Like an FHA loan, Section 184 loans are intended solely for Native American borrowers and can be used for properties located both on and off reservations. 1st Tribal Lending, a division of Mid America, is the nation's leading HUD Section 184 lender and offers full-service broker, mini-corr and correspondent relationships. In addition, 1st Tribal's Section 184 pricing and product eligibility (PPE) engine is now available to all Calyx Point users through the "Product and Pricing" tab under the "Interfaces" option on their desktops. Benefits of working with 1st Tribal to your Native American borrowers include low down payments, more affordable monthly and up-front insurance fees, and old-school underwriting with common sense and flexibility. For more information, contact Dava Garrett or Angela Casas at 866-235-4033, or visit www.hud184wholesale.com."

"DocProbe, the nation's premier providers of trailing document fulfillment services, is thrilled to welcome Richard Scudder to our Team! He brings years of experience in the Mortgage Industry which will enable him to showcase our outstanding services and contribute to DocProbe's Revolution of the Post-Closing scene in the Banking and Mortgage world! We will be attending the Indiana MBA event tomorrow to present our services. Please click here to schedule an appointment with a specialist. DocProbe is currently looking to further expand our close-knit Business Development team in Dallas and California. The is an exciting opportunity for Account Executives with experience selling to Mortgage Bankers, who possess the drive and ambition to make calls, network, and have the face-to-face visits necessary for success. The ideal candidate possesses outstanding interpersonal skills and has an established mortgage banker client base within which they can network. Interested contenders may confidentially submit resume for consideration to Libi Pruzansky."