A new outline on housing-finance reform from Sen. Mike Crapo, R-ID, hands over management of the conventional mortgage market to Ginnie Mae, begging the question: Is Ginnie up to the task?

New production of single-family MBS started the new year on a downbeat, with combined issuance by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae slipping to $80.72 billion in January, ac-cording to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. [Includes two data charts.]

California-based Sabal Capital Partners, one of the earliest partners in Freddie Mac’s Small Balance Loan Program, broke a record this month when it sold the enterprise a portfolio of 39 small-balance loans worth $189 million. All the underlying properties are in East Harlem.

Fannie Mae stepped up its efforts to increase the supply of affordable housing, announcing earlier this week that it was increasing the loan limit for multifamily small mortgage loans from $3 million to $6 million.

Freddie Mac announced late last month that it had closed a deal with RBC Capital Markets to create a $180 million low-income housing tax credit fund. The fund, Freddie’s fourth LIHTC deal since re-entering the market last year after a decade’s absence, has already made several investments.

Freddie Mac last week announced that Sara Mathew has been elected non-executive chair of the company’s board of directors. Mathew, who currently chairs the board’s audit committee, will replace Christopher Lynch, who’s term-limited out after 10 years on the board, six of them as chair.

After a year and a half of following its carefully scripted plan to normalize its balance sheet and return to good, old-fashioned monetary policy, the Federal Reserve muddied the waters at last week’s meeting of the Federal Open Markets Committee.

The White House last week named John Roscoe as the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s chief of staff, effective Feb. 4.

Redwood Trust last week announced that it would invest as much as $78 million in a partnership seeking to acquire up to $1 billion in floating rate light-renovation whole loans from Freddie Mac. The California-based real estate investment trust says it has already funded the partnership to the tune of $20 million.

Investors Unite, a group of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders seeking to reverse the so-called net profit sweep — the mechanism by which the Federal Housing Finance Agency sends all GSE profits to the Treasury as dividends — held a sort of figurative rally last week to celebrate a recent string of legal victories.