It’s now believed that the legislation will clear the committee, but Majority Leader Harry Reid will not allow it to move any further because of weak support overall.

Non-QM mortgages will exist throughout the credit spectrum, according to Mitch Hochberg, a partner at Fenway Summer and general counsel at Ethos Lending, a start-up wholesale mortgage originator.

How much have their balance sheets shriveled over the years? In September 2008, the month in which Treasury placed the GSEs into conservatorship, Fannie alone had a gross mortgage portfolio of $761 billion

Overall, refi loans accounted for 45.7 percent of agency MBS production in the first four months of 2014, compared to 77.2 percent during the same period last year.

The amended consent process that led to faster cash payouts to victims of improper loan modifications and foreclosure practices should be evaluated and tested further to ensure servicers’ implementation of foreclosure prevention principles, according to the Government Accountability Office. The new GAO report represents the third and final phase of the watchdog’s examination of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s Independent Foreclosure Review (IFR) process. In 2013, the IFR was replaced for most servicers with cash payments and foreclosure prevention actions. The latest report found...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together earned $9.3 billion in the first quarter, thanks largely to big settlements of lawsuits over non-agency mortgage-backed securities. Together, the two government-sponsored enterprises will have paid about $213.1 billion to the Treasury at the end of June, roughly $25.1 billion more than the $188 billion the two companies have drawn from the Treasury since being placed in government conservatorship. Freddie earned...

The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee is expected to vote on the housing finance reform legislation next week, but there’s a growing consensus among industry observers that no amount of last-minute patchwork compromises will make the bill ready for a prime-time Senate vote. Many observers said last week’s abrupt announcement by Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-ID, to delay consideration of S. 1217 in order to gain more than the minimum 12 votes needed to clear the committee doomed the chances of getting the bill to the floor for a vote. A banking committee staffer told...

During a legislative markup session this week, the House Financial Services Committee approved H.R. 2673, the Portfolio Lending and Mortgage Access Act, introduced by Rep. Andy Barr, R-KY, which would deem all mortgages held in portfolio to be qualified mortgages under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay rule. Republican supporters characterized the bill as the ultimate “skin in the game” measure and noted it was specifically drafted to avoid the pitfalls of the “originate to distribute” model so heavily criticized for contributing to the financial crisis. But Democrat opponents said...

State regulators are evaluating regulation and supervision of nonbank servicers due to the growth seen in the sector in recent years, according to officials at the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, which last month closed a request for proposals on the issue. “This is just a really good time for us as a system to look at this change, what does this change mean, and how should it inform the licensing regime on the state side,” said Michael Stevens, senior executive vice president at the CSBS. Among other issues, state regulators are researching...

Although the pace of blockbuster servicing deals appears to have slowed, the giants of the mortgage-servicing business continued to leak market share in early 2014. Significantly, there is now just one lender with more than $1 trillion in mortgage servicing. Back in the third quarter of 2005, Countrywide Financial became the first company to amass over $1 trillion in mortgage servicing, and Wells Fargo joined the club by the end of that year. Chase Home Finance became a $1 trillion servicer in the fourth quarter of 2008, shortly after Bank of America took over Countrywide and became the first $2 trillion servicer. But BofA dumped...[Includes two data charts]