In between the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s announcement of a new guaranty fee increase and the Senate’s confirmation of a new FHFA director, a Manhattan federal judge last week quietly issued a ruling that permits the agency to proceed with its residential mortgage-backed securites lawsuits. In the summer of 2011, the FHFA filed suit against 18 big banks in connection with flawed mortgage securities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased between 2005 and 2007. A number of defendants in the case, including a host of individuals, argued in an appeal filed in August that due to a 2005 change in Rule 430B of the Securities Act of 1933, they should not be held liable in the case.

Fannie Mae last week issued an update to its lenders describing the new process that the GSE has implemented to identify and monitor individual appraisers. According to Lender Letter LL-2013-10, Fannie reviews appraisal reports for patterns of discrepancies and inconsistencies. Using the appraisal data that it collects through the Uniform Collateral Data Portal, Fannie said it has developed a process that identifies appraisers whose work displays more egregious issues.

Fannie, Freddie Suspend Holiday Evictions. In what has become an annual tradition, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each announced last week that all foreclosure-related evictions of single-family and two-to-four unit properties are suspended until after the New Year.“At this time of year, we want to bring some relief to families who confronted financial difficulties and went through foreclosure,” said Chris Bowden, Freddie’s senior vice president of REO. The GSEs are also encouraging struggling homeowners to contact their servicers for help to avoid foreclosure. “We encourage any homeowner who is having difficulty making their mortgage payment to reach out for help right away,” added Fannie Chief Operating Officer Terry Edwards.

Despite an increase in primary market mortgage rates during the third quarter of 2013, banks and thrifts were cautious in raising the valuations they placed on their mortgage servicing rights, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. Banks and thrifts serviced $4.770 trillion in mortgages for the benefit of other investors, typically as a result of securitization. As an industry, they assigned a fair-market value of $48.4 billion for these assets ... [Includes one data chart]

Although the plague of mortgage buybacks generally grew less severe during the third quarter of 2013, a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of repurchase disclosures by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shows that the industry continues to grapple with legacy years leading up to the housing market collapse. At the end of the third quarter, loans securitized by the two government-sponsored enterprises in 2007 accounted for 36.9 percent of pending and disputed buyback demands. Loans securitized ... [Includes two data charts]

A continued decline in GSE refinance activity helped contribute to an overall dip in the volume of single-family mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in November, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. Fannie and Freddie issued $58.7 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities in November, a 13.4 percent decline from October and a 6.2 percent decrease for the first 11 months of 2013.

Increases to the guaranty fees charged by the government-sponsored enterprises could prompt some changes for lenders. While execution with the GSEs will remain more attractive than issuing non-agency mortgage-backed securities, new loan-level pricing adjustments could shift some business to portfolio and to the FHA. The Federal Housing Finance Agency last week announced changes to GSE MBS g-fees that will amount to an average increase of approximately 11 basis points, to be implemented in March and April ...

The government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are stepping up their development of a standardized dataset to support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recently finalized consolidated closure disclosure forms – a project that could represent a tipping point in the mortgage industry’s use of electronic mortgages, technology vendor representatives say. The GSEs’ common industry dataset that supports the CFPB’s form is called the Uniform Closing Dataset, and is one component of ...

The trend of deconsolidation among mortgage lenders is likely to reverse due to the advantages of large lenders, according to projections from Fannie Mae. “The recent decline in large-lender share of the primary market is temporary, and principally a result of cyclical factors that caused larger lenders to pull back from the market,” said Gerry Flood, director of strategic planning in Fannie’s economic and strategic research division. Flood cautioned that the projections don’t take ...

With residential originations expected to fall by 25 percent next year, some mortgage executives are predicting grim news in terms of new hiring, especially in any field tied to loan production. But as always, there are always a few “silver linings” in any downdraft, mortgage banking being no exception to the rule. A handful of firms say they are still aggressively recruiting residential loan officers who have a solid background in purchase-money lending – that is, sales professionals with deep ties to ...