Ellie Mae recently completed restructuring its team after its acquisition by Thoma Bravo, a move that includes the layoff of about 10% of its staff. The company explained those let go are being offered severance packages to help with the transition.

The much-anticipated session with FHFA Director Mark Calabria at the MBA Secondary Conference in Manhattan Monday did not disappoint. No, he didn't reveal a timeline for releasing the GSEs from conservatorship, but his mission and intense focus were clear: The status quo isn't an option.

Recently released data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data revealed that the first quarter of this year was the mortgage business’ worst quarter in more than four years, but a deeper dive into the data shows that on the refinance side of things, it may have been the worst quarter since the financial crisis.

The U.S. Department of Education has refused to cooperate with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger. Kraninger recently sent a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, in response to the senator’s questions about the bureau’s efforts to protect student loan borrowers through its oversight of student loan servicers.

Loan servicers have to navigate a continuously changing mortgage landscape. New regulatory requirements, turnover of experienced talent and other factors are all making the mortgage servicing business more turbulent than ever. But perhaps the biggest challenge, especially for small, growing and non-bank servicers, is ensuring that quality control is maintained even when new demands emerge.

President Donald Trump spoke about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for two minutes near the end of a one-hour speech at the National Association of Realtors convention in Washington on Friday. In addition to HousingWire’s story on Trump’s speech, here are the president’s complete and unedited comments on housing-finance reform.

The consensus from the first session of the MBA Secondary conference was that private capital practices today are wholly different than they were pre-crisis, and consumers will be well-served by a greater private-capital presence in the market. In fact, the performance of loans bought by private capital investors since the crisis have performed so well that the standards are probably leaving out a number of worthy borrowers.

President Donald Trump used his one-hour speech at the National Association of Realtors convention on Friday to announce the U.S. would be lifting steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The president also said he fondly recalled his decades in the real estate industry and said he plans to return to it when he’s out of office.