Melvin Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, revealed a new strategic plan for the government-sponsored enterprises last week that shifts away from the contraction goal set by previous FHFA Acting Director Ed DeMarco. “I don’t think it’s FHFA’s role to contract the footprint of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Watt said in remarks at the Brookings Institution. “Our role is to maintain an efficient credit market, and as private capital demonstrates that it will come into this market ...

Rating services and due-diligence firms have plenty of time to analyze originators of jumbo mortgages headed to the securitization market, according to industry experts speaking this week at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual Secondary Market Conference in New York. All the rating services are putting greater emphasis on understanding originator business practices as part of evaluating jumbo mortgage-backed securities deals, said Sharif Mahdavian, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s ...

Originations that don’t meet standards for qualified mortgages have largely been held in bank portfolios in the months since the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay rule took effect. However, nonbanks are also eyeing the products, and industry participants suggest that non-QMs will eventually be included in non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Laurence Platt, a partner at the law firm of K&L Gates, said a number of hedge funds and investment banks are ...

Some 69.9 percent of homes purchased in April were completed with non-cash financing, up from a 69.7 percent share the previous month.

Retail lending, which includes traditional loan-origination offices and consumer-direct operations, was down 60.0 percent from the first quarter of last year, slightly worse than the 58.0 percent downturn in the overall market.

But legislators denied federal funding for a new pilot program – Homeowners Armed with Knowledge – that would broaden use of housing counseling tied to FHA originations and servicing.

The privately held nonbank has carefully ratcheted up the maximum from $750,000 to $1 million and now $1.5 million.

“I don’t think it gets sold for the time being,” said one analyst speaking under the condition his name not be used. “It needs lots of restructuring yet.”

Since that story appeared, we’ve talked to a few mortgage company CEOs who have said – tongue in cheek – that just about every mortgage firm is for sale.

A significant number of independent mortgage bankers failed to turn a profit during the first quarter of 2014, but many firms are tightening their belts and hanging on, thanks to a strong market for mortgage-servicing rights. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual performance report due out late this week, mortgage bankers saw their net profit margin on production and secondary marketing slump to a negative 9 basis points, said MBA Chief Economist Mike Fratantoni. The number was preliminary, but it represents a huge decline since the gung-ho first half of 2013, when lenders generated about 120 bps in net income from production. Only about 55 percent of lenders participating in the survey, which is includes a large number of independent mortgage bankers, earned...