The Department of Housing and Urban Development is tightening its oversight of principals in FHA-insured multifamily properties by requiring lenders to clear all requests for additional insurance commitments that exceed $250 million with HUD before approval. Recently issued guidance describes how lenders can obtain pre-approval from HUD when principals have FHA-insured assets greater than $250 million, including the proposed additional commitments. The department is concerned that FHA may be taking on too big a risk with such principals. HUD pre-approval is required to ...

The long awaited recovery in the jumbo MBS market may finally be here as more banks plan to issue securities.

Quicken is buying a large MSR portfolio from the government-owned Ally Bank and more deals may be in the works.

The Federal Reserve will continue to gobble up MBS and other long-term bonds, which means mortgage rates should stay low.

The FHFA IG, in a new report, is critical of how Freddie Mac is managing its services regarding consumer complaints.

Nationstar Mortgage, a fast growing residential servicer, is losing the man in charge of default processing at the firm.

Industry veteran Sy Naqvi is stepping down as CEO of PNC Mortgage.

Fannie Mae’s delay in releasing its 2012 earnings underscores the sharp turnaround in the con-servatorships of the two government-sponsored enterprises, which lately have begun spewing earnings like the good old days.Freddie Mac, which managed to get its reporting done on time, recorded a whopping $16.0 bil-lion in net income last year, and there’s widespread speculation that Fannie Mae will beat that mark with room to spare.

President Obama and other supporters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau won an ex-pected victory this week as the Democrat-controlled Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee approved, on a 12-10 party-line vote, the nomination of Richard Cordray to be the director of the bureau for a full five-year term.

Members of the House and Senate on both sides of the aisle are working on legislation to reform the mortgage finance system, but partisan differences suggest that the most likely accomplishment may be steps aimed at not making the difficult task any harder.In the Senate, a handful of members from both parties recently introduced the “Jumpstart GSE Reform Act,” which would prevent guaranty fees collected by the government-sponsored enterprises from being used to offset other government spending.