The agencies securitized just $35.46 billion of refinance loans during November, down 15 percent from the previous month, and refinances accounted for 44 percent of total issuance.

With Rep. Mel Watt, D-NC, expected to be officially installed as the permanent director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency as soon as next week, the change could slow the use of risk-sharing deals at the government-sponsored enterprises and progress on the common securitization platform. Of particular concern to investors in the risk-sharing deals is the role mortgage insurance companies play in the transactions. According to industry observers, current FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco would like...

Earlier this week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule that allows the bureau to supervise for the first time the nonbank servicers of private and federal student loans that qualify as “larger participants” in the student-loan servicing market. With an emphasis on supervision, the rule is not expected to have much of an initial effect upon the secondary market for student loans. But the CFPB’s expanding role into the sector could change that, especially if there is a crisis in student-loan lending. The bureau’s new rule defines...

A Manhattan federal judge last week approved a proposed settlement by bankrupt Residential Capital with the Federal Housing Finance Agency to resolve billions of dollars in claims tied to toxic MBS sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the run-up to the financial crisis. Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York approved the agreement, which is tied to a settlement the FHFA reached with Ally Financial, ResCap’s former parent, in late October. Under the agreement, the FHFA will receive...

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a combined $82.33 billion in new single-family MBS during November, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. New MBS issuance by the three agencies was off 12.0 percent from October, continuing a steady downturn that’s been under way since April 2013. Production last month was off a whopping 58.7 percent from November 2012, when Fannie and Freddie volume spurted higher as issuers maneuvered to avoid a pending increase in MBS guaranty fees charged by the two government-sponsored enterprises. Tumbling refinance activity was...[Includes two data charts]

A civil complaint filed by W.J. Bradley Mortgage in California state court against a former top loan officer and her new employer could decide what type of contact and other information an LO can take with them when they leave a firm. Since the fall, the WJB suit filed against former company LO Shelly Logemann, her new employer RPM Mortgage, its owners and others has been the talk of mortgage-banking circles in California and elsewhere. The case is being closely watched...

Representatives of community banks and credit unions again told sympathetic members of Congress about the harmful effects they anticipate upon their mortgage business once all of the related rules promulgated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finally kick in come early January. “Every aspect of mortgage lending is subject to new, complex and expensive regulations that will upend the economics of this line of business,” Industrial Bank President and CEO Doyle Mitchell, representing the Independent Community Bankers of America, told members of the House Small Business Subcommittee on Investigations, Oversight and Regulations during a hearing this week. In particular, community bankers are deeply concerned...

Expect the largest U.S. banks to continue to feel the effects of the mortgage implosion as they pony up over $100 billion to get out from under their legacy mortgage litigation issues, according to an analysis by Standard and Poor’s. Since 2009, S&P noted that the big banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo – together have paid or set aside more than $45 billion for mortgage representation-and-warranty issues and have incurred some $50 billion in combined legal expenses. This does not include...

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling does not have the votes needed to pass the Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners Act in the House and, unless he is willing to be flexible on certain key issues, the package may not reach the House floor at all in this Congress, according to industry lobbyists. Talk that Hensarling, R-TX, may make another push to get the PATH Act to the House floor surfaced this week following an opinion piece he published in the Nov. 27 issue of the Washington Times. In that op-ed, the chairman focused on the bill’s FHA reform component. Hensarling underscored...

The National Association of Independent Housing Professionals is maneuvering to sue the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over broker disclosure of lender-paid compensation under the new ability-to-repay rule, but has yet to green-light an actual filing, pending a needed fundraiser, Inside Mortgage Finance has learned. “The CFPB is an independent agency with no oversight. From their inception on July 21, 2011, they have continually used their authority to pick winners and losers, causing unprecedented harm to consumers, mortgage brokers, loan originators, appraisers and other small-business housing professionals,” the organization said in a fund-raising appeal. “In order to stop these anti-consumer, anti-competition, job-killing rules, NAIHP is filing suit.” In its fundraising pitch, the group noted...