FHFA chief Mel Watt acknowledged the advantage provided to GSE-eligible mortgages...

For traders, the good news is that MBS issuance increased to $357.2 billion in the third quarter, the strongest performance of the year...

Plenty of executives we’ve spoken to the past few months believe the industry is in for a considerable spate of M&A in the year ahead. Then again, we’ve heard that prediction before...

The secondary market in transfers of agency mortgage servicing rights continued to gain momentum during the third quarter of 2017 as long-time players in the mortgage industry executed plans to shift strategy. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of agency mortgage-backed securities disclosures shows an estimated $150.80 billion of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae servicing changed hands during the third quarter. Much of the activity reflected ... [Includes three data charts]

A higher share of Baby Boomers are carrying mortgage debt in retirement than previous generations, prompting concerns about potential foreclosures and other financial issues, according to an analysis by Fannie Mae. “Even with the post-recession acceleration in free-and-clear homeownership, Boomers appear unlikely to attain mortgage-free retirements at the same rate as the predecessor generation,” Patrick Simmons, a director of strategic planning in Fannie’s economic ...

The four megabanks reduced their agency mortgage servicing rights by $59.6 billion during the third quarter…

However, officials at Freddie said the claims regarding the GSE and Equifax lacked context.

The universe of servicing single-family home loans for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae continued to expand in the third quarter, but a handful of large banks wanted little to do with it. The three agencies had a combined $6.378 trillion of single-family mortgage-backed securities outstanding at the end of September, up 1.9 percent from the midway point in the year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of agency MBS disclosures. All three ... [Includes two data charts]

Freddie Mac faced criticism last week from consumer advocates for the way the government-sponsored enterprise’s automated underwriting system handles certain functions involving merged credit reports and Equifax. A story in the New York Times this week detailed how Equifax acted as a “gatekeeper” for certain borrower credit information in Freddie’s Loan Quality Advisor. LQA is a risk and eligibility assessment tool that evaluates loan data to help lenders determine if ...

Mortgages delivered to the GSEs with an unpaid principal balance of $29.30 billion are included in the transaction.