Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw a huge drop in new single-family business in November, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis of loan-level mortgage-backed securities data. The two companies produced just $50.94 billion of new single-family MBS last month, a 25.2 percent decline from October’s level. November 2015 was the slowest month in GSE MBS issuance since May 2014. MBS issuance was down 30.6 percent at Fannie and off 17.4 percent at Freddie. The sharp drop in monthly production had a distinctly seasonal tone. GSE securitization of purchase mortgages fell a whopping 33.2 percent from October to November, and purchase mortgages accounted for less than half of Fannie/Freddie business last month.

Mortgage lenders repurchased $434.2 million of home loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the third quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of securities disclosures made by the two government-sponsored enterprises. That was the lowest quarterly repurchase total since the GSEs, and other “asset securitizers,” began filing disclosures mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act with the Securities and Exchange Commission ... [Includes two data charts]

In the ongoing Fairholme Funds v. The United States case, Judge Margaret Sweeney recently denied Fannie Mae’s motion to quash or invalidate a subpoena issued by the plaintiff’s counsel. As part of the discovery phase, Fairholme Funds asked that Egbert Perry, appointed chairman of the noard of Fannie in 2014 and board member since 2008, be called to testify in the case. In the motion, Fannie and Perry argued that based upon the discovery conducted so far, deposing Perry is “unnecessary and burdensome.” The court rejected that and other arguments made to relieve Perry of testifying. In the November order, Judge Sweeney said that the court permitted discovery in this case to ensure that plaintiffs would have every opportunity to...

Quicken Loans recently launched a new, TRID-friendly product dubbed the “rocket mortgage,” so named because “in the eight minutes it takes a space shuttle to reach orbit, Americans will now be able to receive a full mortgage approval online,” the lender says in its marketing pitch. “Rocket Mortgage simplifies the largest, most complex and important financial transaction most consumers experience in their lifetime,” said Linglong He, chief information officer for the lender ...

Instead of serving as a vehicle to help reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the “Jumpstart GSE Reform Act” would only hinder the mortgage giants, some groups say. A handful of fair housing advocates and civil rights groups joined forces to pen a letter urging House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-WI, along with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-KY and Harry Reid, D-NV, to reject the Jumpstart GSE Reform Act and any attempts to include it in the FY 2016 appropriations agreement. In September, a streamlined version of S. 2038, the Jumpstart Reform Act, sponsored by Sens. Bob Corker, R-TN, Mark Warner, D-VA, and Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, was reintroduced in Congress, then placed on hold and reintroduced again, and...

Mortgage employment has risen by just over 5 percent the past year while loan production is on track to increase 33 percent from 2014 – a sign that residential lenders continue to hire as few workers as possible and use outsourcing firms. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Trends over the past week, it appears that demand for experienced loan officers will remain strong in the coming year, but servicing staffs will continue to shrink. Mortgage recruiter ...

Six months after rolling out an “unsecured” consumer loan, loanDepot has already funded $250 million worth of loans, and issued a $150 million security backed by the collateral. Will other nonbank mortgage lenders follow suit? The short answer to that question is yes, probably, but it remains to be seen whether nonbanks will have the stomach for the risk, though several executives interviewed by Inside Mortgage Trends concede that, in the end, the yield on such products ...

The Urban Institute has suggested separating FHA’s reverse mortgage business from future actuarial audits of the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund because it is producing a skewed picture of MMIF finances. In a recent blog, Laurie Goodman, director of the institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center, said including the highly volatile and unpredictable Home Equity Conversion Mortgage portfolio in FHA’s solvency calculation severely distorts the fund’s true financial condition ...

After the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced last week that the conforming loan limit for GSE mortgages will remain at $417,000 for 2016, and capped at $625,500 in high-cost areas, the California Association of Realtors said it was disappointed that the loan limits weren’t raised across the board, given that home prices in that region are on the upswing and among the highest in the country. The FHFA concluded that the average home value in the third quarter still has not reached the level it was in the third quarter of 2007. According to the expanded-data Home Price Index, national average home prices in the third quarter of 2015 remained...