The Federal Housing Finance Agency late last week directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop charging the 25 basis point “adverse market” fee assessed on all loans since the financial crises, but most lower-risk loans won’t get any reduction in loan-level pricing adjustments. As expected, the FHFA did not make any changes to the “base” guaranty fees charged by the two government-sponsored enterprises. Current fees, on average, are at an “appropriate” level. “We are going to monitor this on an ongoing or quarterly basis and we’ll adjust based on market conditions,” said Sandra Thompson, FHFA’s deputy director. The regulator instructed...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency late last week announced a few changes to new private mortgage insurer eligibility rules that were first proposed in July 2014, and the private MI industry appears mostly ready for them. “The new PMIERs are really designed to promote the counterparty strength of private mortgage insurers. We feel like this will strengthen the industry,” said Gina Haly, Freddie Mac’s vice president in the mortgage insurance and risk transfer counterparty credit division. During the financial crisis, some MIs couldn’t fully pay...

The agency mortgage servicing market grew modestly during the first quarter of 2015, thanks to Ginnie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of agency mortgage-backed securities disclosures. Lenders serviced a total of $5.287 trillion of single-family mortgages pooled in outstanding agency MBS as of the end of March, up 0.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2014. The figures do not include unsecuritized loans guaranteed by the two government-sponsored enterprises or, in the case of Ginnie, FHA-insured reverse mortgages. And the numbers don’t perfectly synch up with aggregated reports by the agencies of their guaranteed mortgage debt outstanding. All three of the top agency MBS servicers had...[Includes two data charts]

With private mortgage insurance eligibility requirements now a done deal, the MI industry may have a new headache on its hands: concerns from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – and their regulator – about the discounting of lender-paid MI policies. Industry officials familiar with the LPMI issue have been telling Inside Mortgage Finance for weeks that the government-sponsored enterprises are taking a close look at the product. Although the Federal Housing Finance Agency declined to discuss LPMI, a spokesman for Freddie Mac offered...

Most of Sen. Grassley's inquiry focused on transparency and whether the president invoked executive privilege over some of the documents pertaining to the third amendment to the PSPAs...

Qualified buyers have until June 2 to bid on the Miami-based loans.

On IMA’s other deal, the brokerage firm is offering $100 million per month of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac “flow” product.

It's always possible that Green Tree could turn around and sue HUD before HUD sues them, which is what Quicken Loans did.

The Federal Reserve is seen as taking the brunt of nonbank servicer-induced prepayment risk on agency MBS.

The sale actually closed at yearend, although it was revealed in a press statement dated April 21.