The nation’s residential subservicing specialists increased their contract base to $1.93 trillion at the end of 2016, a 2.7 percent sequential gain and an impressive 22.9 percent improvement over yearend 2015, according to survey figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance. It’s a sign that this segment of the industry is beginning to look a bit crowded, which means profit margins could come under pressure. Over the past year, several fairly large players in the market – Flagstar, Nationstar Mortgage, Walter/Ditech and PHH Mortgage – have sold...[Includes one data table]

More than a dozen mortgage and housing groups are backing a House bill that would prevent guaranty fees on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities from being hijacked to pay for unrelated government spending. A joint trade group letter, signed by the Mortgage Bankers Association, Community Mortgage Lenders of America, the American Bankers Association, U.S. Mortgage Insurers and others, argues that tapping g-fees for other unrelated purposes imposes an “unjustified burden” on homeowners who would be forced to pay for the increase through higher monthly payments for the life of their loan. Our organizations were...

Since Fairholme filed its “takings” case the government, Uncle Sam has turned over 48,000 documents totaling more than 500,000 pages.

Fannie and Freddie are still worth less than social media darling Snap, but the gap is narrowing...

Fairholme extolled the GSE’s massive fourth quarter profits of almost $10 billion, and called them “indispensable” to the mortgage insurance industry…

Perhaps, residential servicers should receive 33 basis points for servicing Fannie/Freddie loans, not 25 bps...

"You can't overload the human brain," said newly minted HUD secretary Ben Carson. And there was more...

Cowen notes: “…this latest flare up reinforces our view that Treasury is unlikely in 2017 to unilaterally change the profit sweep at Fannie and Freddie…”

The SFIG Vegas conference this week set another attendance record for the annual event, demonstrating strong interest in the structured finance market. While investors are comfortable with most asset classes of MBS and ABS, significant concerns remain about non-agency MBS. More than 6,700 people registered for the conference, according to Jade Friedensohn, director of programming at Information Management Network, which produced the conference along with the Structured Finance Industry Group. Potential investors in non-agency MBS continued...

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae produced a combined $96.70 billion of new single-family MBS during February, a sharp 27.9 percent decline from the previous month, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. February’s issuance was the lowest monthly volume since March of last year. All three agencies saw substantial declines in gross MBS issuance, led by Fannie’s 31.9 percent drop. Still, agency MBS production in the first two months of 2017 was...[Includes two data tables]