Some $800 million in servicer-advance ABS was issued by New Residential last week, helping to restart activity in the sector. New servicer-advance ABS issuance had stalled due to issues with ratings from Standard & Poor’s, the predominant rating service in the market. The two deals concurrently issued by New Residential followed a $225 million issuance by Ocwen Financial at the end of June. The firms helped end a year-plus long break in the issuance of rated servicer-advance ABS. In April 2014, S&P placed...

Bond and MBS prices held steady this week, but market watchers expect that volatility, in general, will persist on pricing until the Federal Open Market Committee meets later in the month to discuss the fate of short-term interest rates. Deutsche Bank, among others, predicts that the FOMC will call for a rate hike then, but it isn’t entirely certain given China’s financial problems. If China continues to crater, the Fed could hold off. Others are predicting...

Activity in the Home Affordable Refinance Program in the second quarter of 2015 was down 0.3 percent from the first three months of the year, according to new loan-count figures released by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Fannie Mae had a slight increase in HARP activity and accounted for 59.3 percent of the total for the two government-sponsored enterprises. Freddie Mac volume was down 1.5 percent from the first quarter. HARP volume represented...[Includes one data table]

Of course, there is a way to avoid the zero capital cushion dilemma. Congress can pass legislation to allow the GSEs to build capital or FHFA can act...

Alt A mortgages accounted for 31.3 percent of the credit losses the GSE took through two quarters in 2015.

Purchase-mortgage lending provided most of the oomph that drove the 23.6 percent increase in total mortgage originations during the second quarter, but refinance activity still accounted for slightly over half of total production. Lenders funded $222 billion of first-lien purchase mortgages during the second quarter, a 59.7 percent increase from the first three months of 2015, according to Inside Mortgage Finance estimates. That was just shy of the $223 billion of purchase mortgages originated back in the third quarter of 2013, a figure that included some second-mortgage production associated with purchase loans. Meanwhile, refinance lending rose...[Includes three data tables]

Fannie Mae last week replaced its MyCommunityMortgage affordable lending program with a new product called HomeReady that allows borrowers to get housing counseling online and integrated with Fannie’s Desktop Underwriter system. Both programs are targeted to lower- and middle-income borrowers in select communities. Barry Zigas, president of Zigas and Associates, a consulting firm focused on housing, said HomeReady is a “game changing announcement” in his blog post this week, especially pointing to the product’s adoption of a standardized consumer education requirement and the incorporation of the product into Fannie’s Desktop Underwriter. Zigas formerly headed Fannie’s affordable housing unit. Its new functionality through DU will allow...

Who cares about large hedging losses? Not the FHFA, which so far has shown no interest in increasing the allowable amount of capital the two can retain...

Ginnie’s big advantage is that it gets all the FHA and VA loans, while the GSEs so far have not gotten much traction in their reduced-downpayment programs.

The CHLA noted that almost 99 percent of depositories are exempt from exams conducted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.