After months of anticipation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency last week issued an official call for public comment, particularly from the mortgage industry, on how Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s conservator should calculate both guaranty fees and loan-level price adjustments. The FHFA’s “request for input” specifically seeks guidance regarding the optimum level of g-fees and their implications for mortgage credit availability, but the agency does not provide any specific proposals as some had expected. One of the first things that FHFA Director Mel Watt did when he assumed office in January was delay implementation of a planned GSE g-fee increase set into motion by his predecessor, Acting Director Edward DeMarco.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued $44.8 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities during the month of May, a slight 1.3 percent dip from April, but it reversed the brief rebound following a year-long streak of declines, according to an Inside The GSEs analysis. However, May’s MBS issuance was down a much steeper 62.4 percent from the same period a year ago. Top-ranked Wells Fargo’s Fannie and Freddie securitization, at $5.97 billion, dropped by 4.9 percent on a monthly basis and by 73.6 percent year-to-date.

The wholesale channel isn’t something to shun, according to officials at Stonegate Mortgage. The nonbank is tapping all three origination channels in an effort to increase its holdings of mortgage servicing rights while controlling origination costs. Stonegate had $2.42 billion in originations in the first quarter of 2014, up 27.4 percent from a year ago, making the publicly traded mortgage banker one of the relatively few lenders to increase its production in that span ...

The environment is ripe for bank mortgage lenders to see improvements in the coming months, according to industry analysts. However, even as interest rates remain at low levels, there has yet to be a significant increase in originations of purchase mortgages. “The mortgage market has slowed, but things aren’t all bad for banks,” Standard & Poor’s said last week in an analysis of banks’ mortgage revenue. The rating service noted that mortgage banking results ...

The bloodbath in mortgage-production losses during the first quarter of 2014 did not occur uniformly across the industry and appears to be related to the failure of many companies to downsize quickly enough, new Mortgage Bankers Association data suggest. Average pretax income as a percentage of equity was -3.15 percent during the first quarter, the MBA said in its Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance report. That was the first negative profit margin since ...

Commercial banks and savings institutions continued to pare down their portfolios of mortgages serviced for other investors during the first quarter, according to a call-report analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. Banks and thrifts serviced a total of $4.56 trillion of home loans for other investors, most of which was associated with mortgage-backed securities. That was down 3.2 percent from the fourth quarter and marked the eighth consecutive ... [Includes one data chart]

For the past year or so, the Millennial generation has been everyone’s favorite punching bag for why the housing market isn’t stronger. Depending on which study you read, this demographic group of 80 million strong just can’t manage to save enough money for a downpayment on a mortgage. Instead, they’ve been living in their parents’ basements or – gasp – renting in “group” homes. This in turn has stifled the housing recovery, or so the experts claim ...

Have you heard about “fair servicing” and “disparate maintenance?” Well, you’re going to. With servicing-related issues making up the lion’s share of consumer complaints about their mortgages, a new supervisory trend that has emerged in recent months is a move toward what could be called a “fair servicing” expectation, according to a pair of experts at the American Bankers Association’s 2014 regulatory compliance conference in New Orleans this week ...

Inventories and disposition times for commercial mortgage assets in special servicing as of year-end 2013 rose modestly compared to year-end 2012 as highly rated servicers moved real estate-owned inventories efficiently, according to a new Fitch Ratings analysis of the commercial mortgage-backed securities market. Analysts with Fitch’s CMBS Group found that REO assets as a percentage of specially serviced portfolios have grown for three of the largest ...

Specifically, the mortgages will be above the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac loan limit of $625,500. But before Redwood can buy its first jumbo loan, the Federal Housing Finance Agency must sign off on the effort.