The CFPB's ban on mandatory arbitration provisions was part of the bureau’s final rule on loan originator compensation promulgated in January.

New bulk MSR packages continue to hit the market. Many of the new deals have low coupons and hardly any delinquencies.

A new bill to replace Fannie and Freddie with a single government guarantor is already being dismissed.

The Senate Banking Committee has yet to schedule a confirmation hearing for Mel Watt to head FHFA. Does this lack of action mean anything?

Nonbank servicers had an average of 275 loans per employee in the second half of 2012, according to Fitch, about the same level seen since 2010.

Bank investment in residential MBS fell 1.1 percent during the first quarter of 2013 to $1.562 trillion.

Come next year, Freddie Mac will assess lenders a fee of $7,500 if they fail to deliver mortgage loans with an aggregate principal balance of more than $5 million.

Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’ conservatorships have caused the government’s involvement in the mortgage market to “balloon to unhealthy proportions” since the two GSEs entered government conservatorship in 2008, creating far-reaching effects on the private sector, crowding out potential capital and blocking real market competition, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.The fix, the MBA suggests, calls for the Federal Housing Finance Agency to require the two GSEs to accept loans with deeper levels of credit enhancement in exchange for reductions in guaranty fees and other loan-level charges.“By requiring the GSEs to offer programs such as up-front risk sharing between lenders and the GSEs, the FHFA would be taking a big step in the right direction,” said MBA President and CEO David Stevens. “Ultimately, this would put private capital, not taxpayers, in the first loss position and would allow lenders of all sizes to compete, driving down costs for borrowers.”

Freddie Mac this week issued $1.04 billion of mortgage-backed securities backed by modified loans.The notes are being pooled into new Freddie Mac “Fixed-Rate Modified Participation Certificates” with new "MA-MD" prefixes. The GSE bought the majority of these loans out of participation certificates when they were at least 120 days past due. A Freddie official said that it will not sell the new bonds in the open market and instead will hold them on balance sheet.

A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, overturning a lower court ruling that the counties and state of Michigan were entitled to collect local real estate transfer taxes from the two government-sponsored enterprises. This week’s unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said the lower court is not in a position to second-guess Congress by creating exemptions to tax statutes. “The statutes at issue here plainly state that the defendants are exempt from ‘all taxation,’” the court ruled. In June 2011, Oakland and Genesee counties each filed suit claiming Fannie and Freddie recorded deeds and other conveyances without paying the Michigan Transfer Tax.