Why short Altisource? This source reasons that as real estate values continue to improve and foreclosures slow, Altisource will have less to do going forward...

Bob Behal, a principal and co-head of ABS and commercial MBS investments at Vanguard Group, said liquidity in the market is fair.

Tozer believes that with depositories in control of the Ginnie market, the regulation of lender/servicers has essentially been outsourced to banking regulators who have “vast experience” in safety and soundness.

On a year-to-date basis, mortgage sales were down 63.6 percent from the first half of 2013.

In short, investors – if they bought mortgage stocks at their peaks – are looking at substantial losses...

In the last quarter, for instance, Fannie and Freddie posted combined net earnings of $5.1 billion – most of which was swept into a Treasury account.

Together, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in August posted a combined increase in the volume of single-family mortgages securitized, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. Fannie and Freddie issued $61.1 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities in August, a 5.5 percent increase from July.However, August's MBS issuance was down 56.7 percent on a year-to-date basis.

Experts Laud FHFA’s Plan for ‘Single Security,’ But Urge Quicker Arrival at Goal. The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s “single security” proposal for a generic Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac MBS is “well-thought out” and “worthy of serious consideration,” but the agency should pick up the pace in its implementation to avoid making the solution part of the problem, according to a paper from the Urban Institute. Lewis Ranieri, chairman of Ranieri Partners, and Laurie Goodman, director of the UI’s Housing Policy Center, expressed concern that the FHFA “may be contemplating a slower pace in the project than it warrants.”

The Senate’s housing finance reform bill would save the government some $60 billion over 10 years according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, but don’t hold your breath waiting for the windfall, say critics. Earlier this month, the CBO issued its estimate, which concluded that replacing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a new securitization program that couples a first-loss position for private capital with back-end government insurance could reduce “direct spending” by $60 billion over the 2015-2024 period.

Loans originated by mortgage brokers tended to have slightly lower credit scores and slightly higher debt-to-income ratios than production by retail lenders and correspondents. An Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae during the second quarter found that broker originations had an average credit score of 721.9 – compared to 728.5 for retail production and 723.4 for correspondent originations. The average DTI for ... [Includes one data chart]