Heavy refinance volume pushed both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac single-family mortgage securitization up appreciably during the fourth quarter of 2012, helping to close out a post-crisis record year for GSE mortgage-backed security business, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis.Fannie and Freddie issued $352.51 billion in single-family MBS during the fourth quarter, a 5.2 percent increase from the previous period and the biggest quarter in over three years.

Depository institutions managed to trim the volume of mortgage loans they serviced for other investors during the third quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call report data...[includes one data chart]

Investment banking and advisory firms continue to talk about private equity money eyeing the mortgage servicing market, but so far no one has made a major plunge. Sterling Partners, a Chicago-area equity fund that hired Phoenix Capital’s Michael Lau back in the fall, plans to invest several hundred million in MSR, according to industry advisors familiar with the firm’s plans. Sterling declined to comment on the subject. Lau, an executive vice president at Phoenix ...

Mortgage banking profitability soared to record levels in the third quarter, but some industry analysts say the boom may begin to taper off in 2013.The surge in mortgage banking income during 2012 came from increased secondary marketing gains as the spread between primary market rates and yields on agency mortgage-backed securities widened to historic levels.

Most consumers have a favorable view of debt protection services for their mortgage and credit card debt obligations, despite the occasional news report of abuses in the sector, according to a new study from officials at the Federal Reserve, based on data from the Consumer Credit Industry Association.“Consumer attitudes among purchasers have not changed from the high levels of favorable views of users in the past,” said the study, which was authored by Thomas Durkin and Gregory Elliehausen...

Technology advances have helped most credit unions improve productivity in their mortgage origination processes, but there are significant differences among institutions and the industry as a whole could do a better job in managing the pipeline, according to an analysis by Mortgage Cadence. “While some credit unions post remarkably high productivity and correspondingly low costs to close, there is significant room for improvement,” said Mortgage Cadence, which offers an integrated loan origination system.

Fannie, Freddie ReformThe Mortgage Bankers Association has formed a special working group tasked with divining an approach to implement comprehensive reform of the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Rolled out in late December, MBA’s 17-member GSE Single Family Task Force will re-examine and add to the association’s 2009 proposal on the future of the secondary mortgage market, according to Task Force Chairman Tim Dale, executive vice president of mortgage lending at BB&T.Dale said the key focus of the task force will be on “transition.”

A foreclosure in a neighborhood causes the price of nearby homes to drop, not because of property neglect or abandonment, but because it increases the housing supply, a new Federal Reserve Board study concludes. Consistent with the finding that a foreclosed home simply increases inventory, new listings of foreclosed homes and non-foreclosed homes each lower home-sale prices by 1.0 percent within 0.1 miles of the listing, according to the study.

Principal reduction is on the rise. Sixty-six percent of Home Affordable Modification Program mods made by banks on mortgages in their own portfolios included principal reduction in the third quarter, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.This compares with 57.7 percent for the second quarter of 2012.Overall, there were 136,316 new loan mods made during the third quarter, with servicers reducing interest rates in 77.2 percent of cases. Term extensions were used in ...

Staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission this week recommended that the agency do more research before making a decision on how to implement a controversial provision in the Dodd-Frank Act involving random assignments of credit ratings in structured finance. Sen. Al Franken, D-MN, was the major proponent of a requirement that the SEC study the feasibility of creating a government body that would pick which credit rating agency would evaluate new non-agency MBS, non-mortgage ABS, commercial MBS and other structured finance transactions. The provision, Sec. 15e(w) of the Dodd-Frank Act, essentially requires the SEC to implement the new system unless the agency determines that an alternative system would better serve the public interest and protect investors. Although some investors and rating services support the Sec. 15e(w) concept, most securitization market participants oppose...