Stakeholders don’t anticipate the FHFA, with a new director nominated by President Trump, to move immediately to reduce the current benchmark loan limit...

Through the first nine months of the year, mortgage banking income was up 20.9 percent from the same period in 2017.

Cowen believes Mnuchin will survive the turbulence but notes the situation still poses a risk to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the big banks…

Altisource has a stock repurchase plan in place that expires at Dec. 31…

The implication is that banks – which seems to have excess capacity on their balance sheets – could simply hold conventional loans in portfolio…

Making sure the MBS issued by the two GSEs perform identically, within narrow limits, is key to convincing traders…

Mortgage lenders that rely on cutting-edge financial technology – or fintech – may be just as guilty as traditional face-to-face lenders of pricing discrimination, according to a new study by economists at the University of California at Berkeley. The researchers found that both traditional and online lenders charge Latino and African-American borrowers 6 to 9 basis points higher interest rates than their white counterparts for purchase-mortgage loans, and 1 to 3 bps more for refinancing ...

Rising interest rates aren’t a major inhibitor of demand for purchase mortgages but they have reduced housing inventory, according to Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American. “Rising mortgage rates create a financial disincentive for existing homeowners with low mortgage rates from selling their homes,” he said in an analysis this week. “This phenomenon impacts both sides of the supply-and-demand dynamic – those who don’t sell, don’t buy either.” First American, a title insurance ...

Retail-originated loans securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae during the third quarter generally had stronger credit scores than similar loans produced by third-party lenders, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loan-level data. The average credit score for a retail purchase loan pooled in an agency mortgage-backed security during the period was 735.47, compared with 720.20 for correspondent purchase ... [Includes two data charts]

Single-family mortgage business slowed predictably at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last month, although there was surprising resilience in the refinance market. [Includes two data charts.]