On the supply side, there were $5.63 trillion of single-family MBS guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae outstanding at the end of September.

Non-cash financing was used on 72.4 percent of home purchases in November, based on a three-month moving average.

Lenders funded an estimated $20 billion of new home-equity lines of credit during the third quarter, a 17.6 percent gain from 2Q, according to IMF.

Loan Care Servicing, an affiliate of Black Knight Financial, subserviced $110.0 billion at Sept. 30, up 47.4 percent from a year ago.

The Merrill borrowers tend to have strong equity positions: the original average combined LTV on the collateral is 54.9 percent.

Scavone was hired by the company in January of 2014.

Meanwhile, the FOMC indicated it will continue to reinvest principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and MBS.

A year ago, in SEC filings, Pershing Square disclosed that it owned just under 10 percent of Fannie and Freddie common.

Home-equity lending continued to grow during the third quarter of 2014 – in fact, it was the fastest-growing segment of the mortgage market – but depository institutions reported further declines in the unpaid balances of these assets on their balance sheets. Lenders funded an estimated $20 billion of new home-equity lines of credit during the third quarter, up 17.6 percent from the previous three-month period. That compared to a 9.8 percent increase in total mortgage originations during the period, and it was the best quarterly HEL production figure in five years, according to Inside Mortgage Finance estimates. Still, the supply of home-equity loans outstanding fell...[Includes three data charts]

The nation’s subservicers, as a whole, reported a modest decline in their business volume during the third quarter, though some firms experienced large declines compared to a year ago, according to exclusive survey figures from Inside Mortgage Finance. The biggest year-over-year decline came at Bank of America, which had just $5 billion in subservicing contracts at Sept. 30, a 78.3 percent drop compared to the same period last year. BofA’s decline in the subservicing sector is...[Includes one data chart]