The top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee acknowledged this week they will not make their ambitious deadline of clearing a housing-finance reform bill by the end of this year. But the senior lawmakers said they remain “bullish” on moving legislation to the Senate floor sooner rather than later in 2014. Speaking at a Bipartisan Policy Center event, Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, blamed “a couple of curveballs,” including the 16-day government shutdown, for falling short of the deadline he and Idaho Republican Mike Crapo set for the committee. The committee did manage to hold 12 hearings on reform and what to do with the two government-sponsored enterprises that have been in conservatorship for a little over five years. “Beyond private capital, we are also working...

The fledgling common securitization platform project isn’t likely to get off course under new Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt, but it probably won’t be the new regulator’s pet project either, according to industry advisors and investment bankers tracking the CSP’s trajectory. One thing is certain though: Watt – approved by the Senate just this week – is so new to the job that he’s not likely to make any major speeches or policy statements about the project until sometime in January, at the earliest. Industry officials note...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have made “major steps” in credit risk transfer in 2013 with more where that came from in 2014, but a senior Federal Housing Finance Agency official says the government-sponsored enterprises, at the FHFA’s direction, won’t rely on a single risk-transfer method going forward. In written testimony prepared for the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee’s final hearing on housing finance reform this week, Wanda DeLeo, the FHFA’s deputy director, division of conservatorship, provided an overview of the GSEs’ risk-transfer transactions to date, as well as the pros and cons of each transaction type. “Pricing on all the transactions this year has been...

Lenders generated an estimated $218 billion in purchase mortgages during the third quarter, the highest three-month volume since the third quarter of 2007.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Popular Democracy have filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to compel the Federal Housing Finance Agency to provide details about its efforts to block municipalities from using eminent domain to prevent foreclosures. 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 MBS investors and whether such interests influenced the agency’s opposition. The suit was filed on behalf of community housing advocates in California, New Jersey and New York. Certain municipalities with large African-American and Latino populations, including Richmond, CA, and Irvington, NJ, are considering...

New residential MBS production represented 78.4 percent of primary-market mortgage originations during the first nine months of 2013, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. A total of $1.243 trillion of residential MBS were issued during the first three quarters of this year, with only $12.2 billion coming from the non-agency MBS market. At the same time, an estimated $1.585 trillion of new home loans were made by lenders, yielding a 78.4 percent securitization rate. The securitization rate was...[Includes one data chart]

“There has been significant industry confusion concerning the extent to which affiliate fees are included in the points-and-fees calculation, particularly when only a portion of a fee is retained by an affiliate,” the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

According to an analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets, Fannie Mae’s portfolio of guaranteed subprime mortgages is declining much more rapidly than Freddie’s.

From what we understand, some GSE employees with MBS backgrounds are eagerly volunteering their services to the CSS project, believing that the “end product,” the MBS, is where the future lies.

The rating services are slowly rolling out their criteria for non-agency mortgage-backed securities issued after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s qualified-mortgage requirements take effect. The consensus among the rating services appears to be that jumbo issuers will initially stick to QMs that receive safe-harbor protections. To meet QM requirements, lenders must document eight underwriting characteristics, including income, employment and debt-to-income ratio. QMs also cannot include ...