Republicans in Congress appeared to pull one over on President Obama and any intention he may have to make a recess appointment of Elizabeth Warren to be the first head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. House Speaker John Boehner, R-OH, refused to allow a vote on the Senate’s adjournment resolution, preventing...

The states and the federal government continue to rack up some key legal settlements with various mortgage servicers. One such settlement was brought about by the Ohio Attorney General and the state Department of Commerce against Carrington Mortgage Services involving a lawsuit that was filed against the subprime servicer back in 2009. The two Ohio agencies and Carrington agreed to mortgage servicing standards that will apply...

Office of the Comptroller of the CurrencyFederal Reserve SystemFederal Deposit Insurance Corp.Securities and Exchange CommissionFederal Housing Finance AgencyDepartment of Housing and Urban Development Credit Risk Retention – Proposed Rule: Comments Due. Public comments on the interagency proposed rule on credit risk retention are due June 10, 2011. (See...

The chairman of the House Budget Committee said this week that a full and transparent accounting of the cost to taxpayers of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is the first, best step to determine how to wind down the two government-sponsored enterprises.During a hearing on taxpayer exposure in the housing markets relating to Fannie, Freddie and the FHA, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-WI, took aim at the White House’s plan for a post-GSE mortgage market. “While the Treasury Department has put forward a ‘framework for reform,’ the Obama administration still...

New issuance in the agency MBS market declined again in May, falling to the lowest monthly production level since the depths of the global liquidity crisis over two years ago. According to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Gin-nie Mae issued a combined total of $71.05 billion of new single-family MBS last month, a decline of 7.7 percent from April’s production. May marked the fifth consecutive decline in monthly agency MBS volume since last year’s refinance boom peaked in December. It was also the lowest monthly production level since... [Includes one data chart]

Fannie Mae this week nearly doubled the total output of the non-agency MBS market in 2011 with a new REMIC backed by FHA home-equity conversion mortgages. The government-sponsored enterprise provided a guaranty wrap on Mortgage Equity Conversion Asset Trust 2011-1, a $9.26 billion transaction backed by HECM loans originated and serviced by Bank of America. Through the first four months of the year, total non-agency MBS production came to just $9.98 billion – most of which were re-securitizations. Fannie said it intends to...

A revival in the non-agency MBS market may still be years away because of competing and seemingly contradictory government objectives for housing finance, according to a new analysis from Standard & Poor’s. The government is doing many things all at once to resuscitate the housing market and hasten economic recovery, but those efforts may actually place recovery on a slow track, said Erkan Erturk, an S&P research analyst and author of the report. Erturk concludes that the housing downturn drove the securitization market away from...

Mortgage investors are calling on federal policymakers to bring more transparency into the securitization process along with a host of other best practices in order to attract sorely needed private capital back into the mortgage marketplace. “Today, mortgage investors face enormous challenges in the capital markets due to opacity, an asymmetry of information, poor underwriting, conflicts-of-interests among key parties in the securitization process, as well as the inability to enforce...

Jumbo mortgages accounted for 7.7 percent of new loan originations in the first quarter of 2011, the highest share for the sector since 2008. A number of correspondent lenders have also expanded their jumbo programs in 2011. Some $25.0 billion in non-agency jumbos were originated in the first quarter of 2011, according to estimates by affiliated publication Inside Mortgage Finance. That was down 16.7 percent from the previous quarter, while overall originations declined by 35.0 percent during the period. The relative strength of the jumbo market increased...[Includes one data chart]

The FHA could lose 7 percent, or $2.8 billion, of its current business if loan limits are lowered this year, according to a government analysis of the impact of new lower loan limits going into effect in the fall. Barring congressional action, the temporary FHA loan limits will revert by statute to the lower loan limits determined by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act for loans insured by the FHA on or after Oct. 1. The FHA single-family loan limit, which is tied to the conforming loan limit, continues to start at $271,050 in low-cost areas and goes as high as $729,750 in high-cost areas of the country. On Oct. 1, however...