Proposed Data Collection for Evaluating Impact of Pre-Purchase Homeownership Counseling. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has asked the Office of Management and Budget to clear a proposal to collect information for a national study that would gauge the effectiveness of pre-purchase homeownership counseling. Rather than individual telephone interviews, the study plans to conduct focus groups and to collect data regarding the characteristics and performance of participants’ mortgage loans, even after the end of the study. The information collection will involve an estimated 6,000 borrower-participants, 1,800 co-borrowers, 64 counseling organizations and three FHA lenders. The study will be conducted in three cities at a cost of approximately $521,830. The proposal will be published in the ...

On the supply side, there were $5.63 trillion of single-family MBS guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae outstanding at the end of September.

Non-cash financing was used on 72.4 percent of home purchases in November, based on a three-month moving average.

Lenders funded an estimated $20 billion of new home-equity lines of credit during the third quarter, a 17.6 percent gain from 2Q, according to IMF.

The Merrill borrowers tend to have strong equity positions: the original average combined LTV on the collateral is 54.9 percent.

Meanwhile, the FOMC indicated it will continue to reinvest principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and MBS.

A year ago, in SEC filings, Pershing Square disclosed that it owned just under 10 percent of Fannie and Freddie common.

The OCC said two banks exited the residential mortgage business in 2014 and another two plan to exit in the coming year.

A handful of other large national wholesalers offer LPMI, including United Wholesale Mortgage.

Advocates for GSE reform looking for savings in the federal budget will be disappointed...