Mortgage application activity dropped 12% in the week ending Oct. 19 as mortgage rates inched higher.

Just two firms showed up at the auction: Nationstar and Ocwen Financial, which is working with Walter Investment, according to industry advisors tracking the deal.

More and more investors are taking a gander at the riskiest tranches of collateralized loan obligations, and they like what they see.

JPMorgan has raised money for BlueMountain Capital Management's second CLO of the year.

SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro criticized the prevailing pay model for ratings agencies on Tuesday.

With BofA out of the correspondent market for almost a year, and with other aggregators paying paltry sums for the ‘servicing released premium,’ many mid-sized FHA lenders want to become direct issuers.

Newtek Business Services, a nonbank financial firm that lends to small businesses, has assumed the servicing of a portfolio of loans originated by Aurora Bank FSB, which are in a securitization trust established in 2006.

It appears that other bidders will make a run at Residential Capital Corp. on Tuesday and Wednesday when the firm is auctioned off by a federal bankruptcy trustee.

Royal Bank of Canada agreed to buy Ally Financial's Canadian auto-finance and deposit business in a cash deal providing $4.1 billion in proceeds to Ally.

In Europe, efforts by out-of-money investors has thwarted recovery efforts by senior bondholders in troubled CMBS deals, according to a Fitch Ratings report published today.

Student loan player First Marblehead Corporation has been accumulating assets over the past two years as collateral for a potential return to the ABS market, said Gary Santo, a managing director at the firm, on the sidelines of ABS East.

Despite being the ABS market's current darling, a speaker at ABS East saw a potential bubble forming in the subprime auto segment.