In a prominent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholder case, the government was ordered to go back through thousands of documents related to the Treasury sweep to determine whether they fall under the executive privilege that has been more narrowly defined. In an attempt to make sure the government asserted privilege properly on the 11,000 documents it is withholding, Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney asked it to reexamine the large batch and turn over any that don’t merit secrecy by April 17. This order follows...

Thanks to strong growth in the agency market, the supply of single-family MBS outstanding continued to grow over the final three months of 2016, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals.

An interview this week with Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and a perennial critic of the Federal Reserve, suggests that the extraordinary level of support the U.S. central bank gave to the housing and mortgage markets in the wake of the financial crisis may mean the Fed is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The three major credit bureaus plan to exclude two critical pieces of negative information from their reports, which may make it easier for some borrowers to qualify for a mortgage.

A program launched in September to provide grants to mortgage brokers has helped launch 15 new independent mortgage brokerage shops, according to the National Association of Mortgage Brokers.

Appraisers are most frustrated with the FHA, excessive regulations and insufficient compensation, according to a National Association of Realtors survey of more than 2,000 appraisers.

A new study by LendingTree said that Pittsburgh tops the list of cities for millennial homebuyers with 48.4 percent of all purchase mortgage requests coming from that demographic.

The retail channel remains the predominant source of jumbo originations, according to an Inside Nonconforming Markets analysis of survey responses collected by Inside Mortgage Finance. Among the top jumbo lenders, more than four out of five jumbos originated during the fourth quarter of 2016 were through the retail channel. The 81.6 percent retail share of jumbo originations was up from a 79.3 percent share in the fourth quarter of 2015 ... [Includes one data chart]

As interest rates increase and refinance business shrinks, some lenders are putting an emphasis on non-qualified mortgages. “CashCall Mortgage’s business in refinance has fallen off; it is now targeting a different section of the marketplace,” Joe Tomkinson, chairman and CEO of Impac Mortgage Holdings, said during the nonbank’s recent earnings call. “Now we are bringing a product that is very real estate friendly to the marketplace, and we will see an increase in that.” Most of ...

Freddie Mac is preparing to issue a $639.91 million Whole Loan Securities transaction backed by conforming-jumbo mortgages, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Some 65.9 percent of the mortgages in the transaction were originated by Caliber Home Loans, followed by Wells Fargo Bank with a 19.1 percent share and Quicken Loans with a 10.0 percent share. JPMorgan Chase recently opted to include conforming-jumbo mortgages in a non-agency ... [Includes five briefs]