Roughly $164.77 billion of securities backed by commercial mortgages were issued last year, down just 0.6 percent from 2013, which was a banner year.

The repo is contingent upon PennyMac – a publicly traded REIT – maintaining minimum tangible net worth of $860 million and minimum unrestricted cash of $40 million.

Any monkeying with the GSE charters must get past two of the most powerful lobbying groups in all of housing finance...

The money will flow directly into the U.S. Treasury Department, which controls the senior preferred shares of the two government-sponsored enterprises.

For the year, the 20 banks earned $3.090 billion from mortgage banking, down 30.5 percent from their income in 2013.

The FHFA proposal, however, could spell trouble for certain nonbank servicers with limited resources.

An official involved in the non-agency MBS market said it’s easier to sell private placements than it is to meet requirements for publicly registered deals

The DBO request for proposal asks that applicants for the Ocwen contract state whether they – or any affiliates – have done any consulting work for the servicer.

Wells Fargo was the largest Fannie/Freddie servicer at yearend with $791.0 billion, followed by Chase Home Finance ($429.1 billion) and Bank of America ($260.4 billion).

Ocwen Financial may have to settle with investors in non-agency MBS it services to avoid having the underlying servicing rights being yanked away by a trustee, according to investors and analysts tracking the situation. Early this week, Ocwen attorney Richard Jacobsen sent a letter to the law firm of Gibbs & Bruns, sternly telling the attorneys for some of the RMBS holders that there is no basis for default under the trust agreements. Gibbs & Bruns is working...