Ginnie Mae servicers continued to experience modest increases in servicing outstanding while FHA servicers reported a slight increase in 30-to-60 day delinquencies, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of the agencies’ servicing portfolios as of midyear 2013. As of June 30, Ginnie Mae’s total servicing outstanding was $1.4 trillion, an increase of 6.6 percent from last year and up 1.8 percent from the first quarter, reflecting improvements in government-backed loan originations due to a slowly recovering economy. Ginnie Mae servicing volume has been ... [2 charts]

HUD Hires Expert to Improve FHA Operations, Risk Management. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced Biniam Gebre as the new general deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Housing. He will be joining the FHA leadership team. Before joining HUD, Gebre served as a principal at global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., where he led a company-wide, public-sector initiative to develop insights, tools and approaches for building capabilities in ...

In particular, mortgage industry professionals are focused on third-party-paid charges and seller-paid points in the QM rule.

When it comes to guaranty fees, FHFA has taken "meaningful steps" to level the playing field for community lenders, one agency official testified this week.

The Federal Reserve expects to take further action on mortgage risk retention rules in September.

Freddie Mac this week issued the first in a series of planned transactions from the government-sponsored enterprises to share risk with the non-agency market. Industry analysts suggest that while the transaction represents a good value for investors, the audience for the transactions structured like a synthetic collateralized debt obligation is limited. The Structured Agency Credit Risk Debt Notes 2013-DN1 included a total of $500 million in two non-guaranteed tranches sold to investors with 10-year terms, according to non-agency market participants. The STACR reference pool consists...

UBS, one of the first of the 18 big banks named in lawsuits brought by the Federal Housing Finance Agency two years ago in connection with non-agency MBS purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, announced this week that it is seeking to settle with the FHFA following an adverse federal appeals court ruling against the Swiss and other defendants. In announcing its preliminary second quarter 2013 results, UBS said it has reached “an agreement in principle” with the FHFA to settle claims against its subsidiary UBS Americas related to residential MBS offerings between 2004 and 2007. UBS did not specify...

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority will begin disseminating information for so-called specified-pool MBS issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, as well as securities backed by loans with Small Business Administration guarantees. The move is aimed at increasing transparency in specified pools, which represent an estimated 3,500 trades, totaling $18 billion in par value, on an average daily basis. It follows a similar effort by FINRA last year in the to-be-announced market for agency MBS. Transaction data will be circulated...

If anything, the second quarter might be remembered as a period in which banks hiked their MSR values significantly.

Even though Ginnie Mae has already approved more new MBS issuers this year than last – with two months still left in the government’s fiscal year – it has another problem on its hands: few of these firms are actually using the program. “There have been fairly significant holes in participation,” said Gregory Keith, senior vice president and chief risk officer for the agency. In an interview with Inside MBS & ABS, Keith said Ginnie is...