The first week of August was volatile for MBS prices as investors tried to make sense of the new job numbers and whether the “flight to quality” of U.S. Treasuries and MBS would continue unabated. “The market was very reactionary even to minor news this week,” said Joe Farr, director of sales and marketing for MBS Quoteline. As Inside MBS & ABS went to press, the bid price on the benchmark Fannie Mae 3.50 percent bond was in the neighborhood of 103.43 ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reduced their retained mortgage portfolios by a combined $44.4 billion during the second quarter, a period during which the government-sponsored enterprises posted substantial increases in net earnings. Freddie Mac’s non-agency MBS holdings declined 11.6 percent, while its un-securitized whole-loan portfolio dropped 3.0 percent. The GSE sold $3.3 billion of non-agency MBS and securitized $2.1 billion of single-family ... [Includes one data chart]

The open market trading desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has announced plans to streamline the administration of agency MBS held in the Federal Reserve’s System Open Market Account (SOMA). As one of the central bank’s monetary policy tools, the SOMA assists the New York Fed in carrying out open market operations, which acquire the assets that serve as collateral for circulating U.S. currency, a tool for managing reserve balances and ...

Freddie Mac guaranteed its first multifamily small balance loan securitization this week as part of its effort to better serve less populated markets and smaller apartment communities. The government-sponsored enterprise plans to guarantee approximately $108 million in this first series of SB Certificates. This is a new credit risk transfer comprised of multifamily MBS backed by small balance loans underwritten by Freddie and issued by a third-party trust. In these SB deals, Freddie is ...

The brunt of the new revenue also looks as though it will be collected from mortgage borrowers.

The new jumbo deal from Shellpoint includes originations from New Penn along with contributions from 30 other lenders.

Brian O’Reilly, president of The Collingwood Group, believes the CFPB is out of control with its regulatory crackdown...

Servicing employment has been under pressure the past few years as loan processors such as Ocwen Financial, Nationstar Mortgage and others move to offshore as many back office workers as possible.

Meanwhile, PHH may be facing exposure on a front that investors had no clue about until recently: marketing service agreements...

Originations of jumbo mortgages continued to increase in the second quarter of 2015 and lenders are chasing volume by lowering interest rates and loosening underwriting standards. Some $93.0 billion in jumbos were originated in the second quarter, according to estimates by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Halfway through 2015, originations totaled an estimated $163.0 billion, up 58.3 percent compared with the mid-point of 2014. Banks continue to ... [Includes one data chart]