With the Federal Housing Finance Agency preparing to announce whether or not it will change the current conforming loan limit for 2016 any day now, speculation abounds. Although industry groups largely supported an FHFA plan that correlates adjustments of the conforming loan limits to FHFA’s “expanded data” House Price Index, the extent to which conforming loan limits should be adjusted remains debatable among trade groups and housing observers. Back in May, the FHFA noted that home prices were close to recovering from the aftermath of the financial crisis, which caused some to speculate that it could prompt an increase to the conforming loan limit.

The pay raise that CEOs Donald Layton of Freddie Mac and Timothy Mayopoulus of Fannie Mae got earlier this year likely won’t last long after the House passed legislation this week to cap their salaries at $600,000 per year, what they were making prior to the increased compensation package. The house passed this week the Equity in Government Compensation Act, introduced by Rep. Ed Royce, R-CA, in May, to suspend the multi-million dollar compensation packages approved earlier this year by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Royce said the bill will be the first major stand-alone legislation enacted that deals with the GSEs since they were placed into conservatorship if President Obama signs it into law as expected.

Commercial banks and savings institutions reported a hefty decline in mortgage-banking income from the second to the third quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. The banking industry earned $3.793 billion from mortgage banking during the third quarter, a 37.7 percent decline from the previous three-month period. That’s an even bigger drop than the 25.8 percent decline reported by the group of 34 ... [Includes one data chart]

Recent findings from a Fannie Mae survey suggest a substantial digital divide exists between the mortgage lending industry and younger, more tech-savvy borrowers who want to shop for a mortgage online via mobile technology, such as smartphones and tablets. For instance, roughly three out of four lenders surveyed recently by the government-sponsored enterprise do not offer a mobile software application to help consumers shop for a mortgage. “Larger and mid-sized ...

The Federal Home Loan Bank system introduced a new servicing-released option from Nationstar Mortgage as part of its Mortgage Partnership Finance program. The program lets member lenders sell their fixed-rate government loans into the secondary market. and the new option is expected to be ready sometime in December. The MPF government mortgage-backed security product already had a servicing-retained option, in which the lenders service their own loans, but with the new product, FHLB bank members can use the full service options without the infrastructure or expertise needed to service the loans. John Stocchetti, executive vice president of the MPF program, which operates out of the Chicago FHLBank, said the new option is another step in the FHLBank system becoming a “one-stop shop” for its members.

When you hold an earnings call and not one analyst shows up to ask a question, one of two things is going on: business is so good that no one needs to ask, or research firms have dropped your stock. The latter appears to be the case with Altisource Asset Management Corp., one of three publicly-traded companies that can trace its lineage to Ocwen Financial Corp., a once top-five ranked servicer that’s in the process of shrinking, deleveraging its balance sheet and trying to figure out ...

Mortgage customer satisfaction has improved this year compared to the previous year as lenders adopted new digital technology and improved efficiency, according to the J.D. Power 2015 U.S. Primary Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Survey. Overall customer satisfaction with the mortgage process averaged 793 in 2015, up 7 points from 2014. Customers expressed a high degree of satisfaction – a 22-point gain from the previous year – with the speed of the loan process ...

The Federal Home Loan Banks reported a modest decline in outstanding advances during the third quarter, but the complexion of the system’s customers continued to shift, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis of bank call reports and Office of Finance disclosures. Total advances outstanding declined just 0.2 percent from the end of the second quarter, but commercial bank usage was down 8.2 percent. Banks were still the biggest borrowers of FHLBank advances, with a 58.9 percent share of the total $586.2 billion (par value) of advances outstanding at the end of September. Meanwhile, advances to insurance companies surged a whopping 14.6 percent during the third quarter, replacing thrifts as the second-largest class of FHLBank advance users.

Current readings from the house price-to-rent ratio point to the potential for a bubble in the housing market, according to John Williams, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. “I am starting to see signs of imbalances emerge in the form of high asset prices, especially in real estate, and that trips the alert system,” Williams said in a speech this month. He noted that the house price-to-rent ratio is close to where it was in 2003, and home prices continue to increase ...

Two recent studies tout the case for recapitalizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and cite concerns surrounding access to credit and the need for more affordable housing. While the Obama administration officials have previously rejected such proposals, that hasn’t stopped the ideas from flowing. Promoting affordable housing by recapitalizing Fannie and Freddie is the premise of a new study released by Robert Shapiro, former Brookings Institute fellow, and chairman of Sonecon, LLC, along with Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at Brookings. They argue that conservatorship should come to an end. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition also released a white paper and focused on protecting the GSE duty to serve and the role it plays in providing access to credit and affordable housing...