The former analyst said Freddie has “an inferior security [MBS] necessitating the need for a lot of time and expense to create a common securitization platform…”

All three mortgage-production channels saw increased volume during the first quarter of 2015, but brokers made the most of the rising market, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. Mortgage brokers produced an estimated $39.0 billion of home mortgages during the first three months of 2015, an increase of 14.7 percent over the fourth quarter. That pushed the broker share of originations to 10.8 percent, the sector’s highest market share since 2010. Retail production facilities did...[Includes five data tables]

Conforming loan limits could go up for the first time in years as the Federal Housing Finance Agency formally announced plans to use one of its own home price indexes to calculate changes. “Given the rising prices, it is now important that FHFA formally establish the specific methodology it will use for tracking prices and adjusting the baseline loan limit,” the agency said in a public notice seeking feedback. The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 prevents...

Six months into the latest representations-and-warranties framework from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, lenders said they appreciate the added clarity but are approaching the changes with caution as more transparency is still needed. The new rules, announced by the government-sponsored enterprises in November 2014, were made to ease lenders’ concerns about repurchase requests for loans that contain data inaccuracies or misrepresentations. During last week’s secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association, Jeremy Potter, general counsel and chief compliance officer at Norcom Mortgage, said...

Texas and Florida, the second- and third-largest sources of GSE business, both saw solid gains from a year ago...

Although Freddie Mac did not disclose the exact purchase price, it said the cover bid was in "the mid 70s of UPB..."

A big part of the MBS liquidity issue is caused by the Fed’s massive holdings, said Steve Abrahams, a managing director at Deutsche Bank.

The common securitization platform and single security are years away, but officials from the GSEs, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Common Securitization Solutions, LLC, offered additional information about future plans and the inner workings of the platform at the Mortgage Bankers Association Secondary Conference in New York this week. Robert Fishman, FHFA’s senior associate director in the office of strategic initiatives, said the two initiatives are intimately related because the CSP will be the platform to issue the single security. The CSP was already been underway when the single security was announced a year ago. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “are critical to the current function of the housing market. So while it’s very helpful to think about the...

Commercial banks and thrifts held $1.58 trillion of residential MBS at the end of March, a 2.6 percent increase from the previous quarter.

Is a single GSE security years in the distance? It's hard to say. The FHFA won't offer a timeline.