The heavy role of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae in the post-crisis mortgage market has brought lower rates and considerable liquidity to the mortgage business, but industry leaders question whether private capital can meet the growing need to finance nonbank servicing portfolios and the eventual pullback of the Federal Reserve. “We wouldn’t have the same price we have now without the government being there; its programs provide a 2 to 3 percent discount,” said Stan Middleman, CEO of Freedom Mortgage Corp., during a panel session at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s secondary market conference this week. “They are the whole enchilada. If you took them out, we’d have nothing.” The government-sponsored enterprises are...

Falling delinquency and foreclosure rates over the last few years have continued to break recent records, according to industry sources, thanks to several factors including an improved housing market and price appreciation. As of the end of March, only 4.95 percent of the $5.08 trillion of home mortgages covered by the Inside Mortgage Finance Large Servicer Delinquency Index were in default or foreclosure status. That was down from 5.54 percent at the end of the fourth quarter. The figures are not seasonally adjusted. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported...[Includes one data table]

A paper recently published by the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research detailed links between changes in underwriting standards at banks and the banks’ loan application denial rates and mortgage performance. While the findings are intuitive, the paper from the OFR was the first to match individual lenders’ confidential responses to the Federal Reserve’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey with data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. “We find...

How disruptive were MSR ‘marks’? The nine nonbank lenders tracked by Inside Mortgage Trends reported a combined $510.0 million loss in the first quarter…

When Freddie recently unveiled a first-quarter loss due to hedges affected by falling interest rates, MBA chief Dave Stevens issued a statement once again calling for Congress to enact housing-finance reform, but said nothing about the issue of zero capital.

DFA also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that seems almost universally loathed by the mortgage industry.

UWM is offering “rate incentives” for jumbo borrowers with FICO scores north of 740, and a promise to close the loan in 25 days or less…

KBRA noted that most nonbanks with large holdings of MSRs don’t hedge large swaths of their portfolios…

At March 31, the Anaheim, CA-based FCI had $4.2 billion of servicing contracts on its books.

“This is a seminal change,” one GSE observer told us.