In a show of bipartisanship, work on reforms in the credit bureau industry kicked off this week, with legislation circulating and the House Financial Services Committee’s hearing testimony from CEOs of three major rating agencies.

This week, Mark Calabria moved a step closer to heading the Federal Housing Finance Agency. His nomination as the agency’s director was approved by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on a party-line vote of 13-12.

Do you trust your mortgage lender? This turns out to be a crucial question when it comes to persuading borrowers to refinance their homes, according to a paper by researchers at the Columbia Business School. The answer they got: Not so much.

Mortgage delinquency and foreclosure rates shrunk in the fourth quarter of 2018, helped by tight underwriting standards along with a strong economy and home price trends. [Includes one data chart.]

Warehouse lenders ended the year with $64.0 billion of commitments on their books, a modest 1.4% sequential decline and flat compared to the same period a year ago, according to survey figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance. [Includes one data chart.]

The one bright spot in the residential mortgage market last year was purchase-mortgage lending, which provided at least a faint glow in an otherwise dreary year for lenders. [Includes four data charts.]

The average daily trading volume in agency MBS spiked northward in January, increasing 18.3% on a sequential basis, according to figures compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

Even though Mark Calabria backtracked on a decade of controversial comments about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at his confirmation hearing last week, his nomination to run the Federal Housing Finance Agency came out of the Senate Banking Committee with a 13 to 12, strictly party-line vote.

The industry is considering adopting block-chain technology in structured finance for its purported advantages, but S&P Global Ratings has expressed concerns that the nascent nature of the technology may introduce new risks to securitizations.

Comprehensive housing-finance reform probably isn’t in the cards anytime soon, but a plan to overhaul the GSEs is, according to industry participants. It remains unclear, though, what changes will be accomplished and whether Congress will pass legislation or if the reforms will be completed via the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Treasury Department.