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.

Even though mortgage applications are beginning to wane, competition for loan officers remains strong with certain growth-minded nonbanks aggressively courting high performers from such places as Bank of America, SunTrust and Wells Fargo, according to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance over the past few weeks.

Financial trade groups are backing bipartisan legislation introduced in the House that would modify the definition of points and fees in the Dodd-Frank Act ability-to-repay and “qualified mort-gage” provisions. Introduced by Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-MI, and backed by seven bipartisan cosponsors, H.R. 1077, the Consumer Mortgage Choice Act, would amend the DFA’s points-and-fees definition to avoid shutting out low and moderate-income borrowers from the QM market.

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.

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.

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.