The Federal Housing Finance Agency has issued guidance to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on how to effectively pursue and collect deficiencies from borrowers who may have the ability to repay their mortgages. In a recent advisory bulletin, the FHFA identified the factors the GSEs should consider before attempting to recover a deficiency balance.

The mix of single-family mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the third quarter of 2013 continued to shift toward purchase mortgages, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of the government-sponsored enterprise market. Purchase mortgages accounted for 36.7 percent of Fannie/Freddie business during the third quarter, up from 23.9 percent during the previous period. It was the highest purchase-mortgage share of GSE business since the market collapse ... [Includes two data charts]

New prepayment data provide further evidence that rising mortgage interest rates are shriveling the refinance market, but firming home prices are fertilizing a potential surge in home-equity lending. “We have seen prepayments decline by more than 30 percent since May, when mortgage interest rates began climbing approximately 100 basis points to where we are today,” said Herb Blecher, senior vice president at Lender Processing Services. As a result, the percentage of borrowers currently in loans with ...

Over the past two months, some of the nation’s largest residential lenders – Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo – have sent layoff notices to 7,200 full-timers, according to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Trends. The layoffs break down as follows: 4,100 at Wells Fargo, 2,100 at BofA and 1,000 at Citigroup. JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s number two ranked lender, has been trimming staff as well. In total, roughly 1,200 mortgage workers were let go at Chase locations in Texas and California ...

An analysis of modified mortgage loans shows Ocwen Financial’s modifications were the best in the field as the servicer focused not only on volume but on quality as well. Performed by Moody’s Investors Service, the report attributed Ocwen’s excellent results to its ability to take that extra step to prevent the loan from going to foreclosure and help distressed homeowners keep their homes. Moody’s focused on mortgages that were seriously delinquent at the height of the mortgage crisis ...

The Appraisal Foundation suggested this week that “alternative valuation products” likely will not comply with professional appraisal standards in most cases. If an AVP requires the same development and reporting requirements as an appraisal, the Appraisal Foundation said in a white paper, why would the industry create the AVP in the first place? The foundation noted that the Appraisal Standards Board does not deem any alternative valuation product or form as compliant with the industry’s ...

Nearly three-fourths of mortgages in Bank of America’s foreclosure review pipeline are on hold due to various regulatory and process delays, according to a new analysis by Moody’s Investors Service. The delays have caused foreclosures at the bank to last sometimes up to a year longer, on average, than foreclosure timelines for Freddie Mac. As of the end of August, Moody’s said BofA had 115,000 loans scheduled for foreclosure review. “Over 72 percent of the population was non-workable inventory because of ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have to dial back the multifamily spigot if they’re going to meet the targets their regulator wants them to as it seeks to shrink the GSEs’ presence in the space. It looks like it might require a bigger turn of the dial for Freddie than for Fannie. As part of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s 2013 Conservatorship Scorecard, FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco has called for a 10 percent reduction target in GSE multifamily business volume this year compared to 2012.

Declining refinance volume contributed to a marked decline in the GSEs’ overall business during September compared to the previous month, with Fannie Mae seeing a rise volume to the detriment of Freddie Mac, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis.Fannie and Freddie issued $78.6 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities during the third quarter, a 20.0 percent decline from August but a 9.0 percent rise for the first nine months of 2013. [Includes one data chart.]

The “public voice” of the Federal Home Loan Bank system is calling on policymakers to remember the 12 regional banks as proposals are considered to restructure the nation’s housing finance system. A recently issued one-page “position paper” by the Council of Federal Home Loan Banks lists a set of nine positions the 12 have collectively adopted to remind official Washington that the system has “operated prudently and served as a mechanism for economic stability” for more than 80 years.