Some 29.3 percent of home purchases completed in November relied solely on cash. That was the third monthly increase in the share of cash transactions.

Unhappy with the fact that newly approved Ginnie Mae MBS issuers aren’t using the program very much, the agency plans to hire more account executives to work with mortgage firms and step up its outreach. “We’ve hired about five new account executives over the past six months,” Ginnie Mae president Ted Tozer told Inside MBS & ABS. “That gives us 12.” Tozer noted...

Fannie Mae will take a closer look at transfers to subservicers. The Federal Housing Finance Agency settled a non-agency MBS lawsuit with Deutsche Bank.

This year’s prolonged and bitter political fight to install Rep. Mel Watt, D-NC, as the new director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency may turn out to have been the easy part, say industry observers, as he prepares to assume his place as arguably the most powerful mortgage regulator in the U.S. Last week’s 57-41 vote was the second successful confirmation under new Senate rules that essentially eliminated the filibuster for presidential appointments. In November, Senate Democrats muscled through a procedural change that replaced the 60-vote supermajority on nominations with a simple majority vote, shutting down GOP efforts to block Watt’s advance to the Finance Agency’s corner office.

Incredulous mortgage industry trade groups are pushing back against a controversial increase this week in loan-level price adjustments for loans purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two GSEs – under the direction of the Federal Housing Finance Agency – rolled out their LLPA revisions – Freddie calls them post-settlement delivery fees – through bulletins to seller/servicers. The LLPA adjustments follow the announcement last week by outgoing FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco of another 10 basis point increase of guaranty fees Fannie and Freddie charge lenders.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will drop the 25 basis point adverse-market fee that had been applied to all mortgages since 2008 as part of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s three-pronged adjustment in the guaranty fee the GSEs charge lenders. The FHFA announced changes to GSE g-fees that will amount to an average increase of approximately 11 bps, to be implemented in March and April. Analysts at Barclays Capital said the effective g-fee on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages will be about 62 bps.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency proposed this week to establish “loan-purchase” limits for the GSEs which won’t occur until next October at the earliest. The regulator and conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is seeking comments regarding loan-purchase limits 4.0 percent below the statutory GSE loan limits. The FHFA said it is considering a $600,000 purchase limit in the highest-cost markets and a purchase limit of $400,000 in non high-cost markets.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has issued guidance to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stating that it would like to review any transfer of mortgage servicing rights where 25,000 or more in loans are being sold, investment-banking officials told Inside The GSEs. Sales that entail MSR portfolios of under that amount will avoid FHFA scrutiny. Fannie and Freddie, as a technical matter, have control of the servicing rights to the loans they guarantee and contract out with mortgage firms to process the payments on a monthly basis.

The American Civil Liberties Union and a Brooklyn-based advocacy group, the Center for Popular Democracy, have filed a Freedom of Information Act claim against the Federal Housing Finance Agency demanding that the regulator produce all agency records “pertaining to the use of eminent domain to purchase mortgages.” Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit seeks information regarding the FHFA’s relationship with big banks and mortgage-backed securities investors and whether such interests influenced the agency’s opposition. The suit was filed earlier this month on behalf of community housing advocates in California, New Jersey and New York.

A nearly decade-long class-action fraud lawsuit on behalf of Fannie Mae investors and the GSE’s accountant KPMG LLP has been put to rest following the approval of a federal court judge earlier this month. In papers filed with the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, Judge Richard Leon said he found the $153 million settlement and plan for distributing it among the more than one million class members was “fair, reasonable and adequate.” Two Ohio pension funds – the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio – filed suit in 2004 related to a $6.3 billion overstatement of earnings against Fannie and three former GSE executives, including then-CEO Franklin Raines.