The 3 percent downpayment mortgages announced this week by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be a better deal than similar FHA financing for stronger-credit borrowers, according to analysts. Final details of the conventional 97 loan-to-value ratio products were released this week to mixed but mostly favorable reviews. Although aimed at first-time homebuyers in Fannie’s MyCommunityMortgage and Freddie’s Home Possible programs, the products are also available for refinances of existing GSE loans.Only 30-year, fixed-rate loans are eligible and the home must be the borrower’s primary residence. In Fannie’s case, borrowers who go through MCM would pay lower upfront loan-level price adjustments. Freddie requires that the loans go through Home Possible. Analysts with FBR Capital Markets said the government-sponsored enterprises’ ...

Mortgage production likely will be flat in 2015, a prognosis that usually doesn’t warm the hearts of vendors that make their living off of originators. But don’t tell that to Ellie Mae, the publicly traded mortgage software provider whose Encompass platform has been growing steadily in recent years. In an interview with Inside Mortgage Trends, company President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Corr predicted that Ellie Mae’s revenues will grow by 25 percent next year, the same growth rate as ...

Private mortgage insurers ended the third quarter of 2014 on a strong note, increasing their combined volume of net premiums written to $1.05 billion, up 9.8 percent from the prior quarter and 2.8 percent over the first nine months compared to the same period a year ago, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of industry data. Based on the upward production trend over the last three quarters, it appears the private MIs are on their way to a strong close at year end ...

Downpayment requirements play a larger role than interest rates in whether a potential borrower can afford a mortgage, according to new research from staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Potential borrowers who are less wealthy are particularly sensitive to downpayment requirements. Andreas Fuster and Basit Zafar, senior economists at the NY Fed, designed a survey in which respondents are asked for their maximum willingness to pay for a home comparable to their current home ...

The key factor is that some mortgage originators, the megabanks especially, are keeping conventional loans in portfolio that might otherwise be securitized by Fannie and Freddie.

According to Inside Mortgage Finance, among the top 15 jumbo originators eight are nonbanks.

The data to be reported under the CFPB’s proposal likely will inflame the current fair lending regulatory environment.

New Penn also reorganized its origination channels, consolidating wholesale and correspondent, while adding a mini-correspondent business line.

A proposed FHA administrative fee as high as 4 basis points to fund quality assurance enforcement and technology upgrades also went down in flames.

Quicken Loans, the nation’s largest nonbank lender, recently offered a lender-paid mortgage insurance “sale” through loan brokers, committing $100 million to the effort and wrapping up the promotion in roughly 60 hours. According to Tod Highfield, vice president of loan production at Quicken, the sale wasn’t designed to hit any volume targets per se, but was meant to heighten the firm’s profile among certain segments of the origination market, namely brokers, credit unions and community banks. The offer was pitched...