The Federal Housing Finance Agency is expected to unveil final rules on Private Mortgage Insurer Eligibility Requirements (PMIERs) by the end of March, but there could be a surprise in the works. According to industry lobbyists and MI executives interviewed by Inside Mortgage Finance this week, the FHFA may publish the PMIER rules in tandem with new guidelines on loan-level price adjustments or LLPAs. “The MI industry is...

Now that the hurrahs and uproar over FHA’s reduced annual premiums have died down, analysts are having mixed views regarding its short- and long-term effects on private mortgage insurers. Some analysts predict FHA’s 50 basis-point reduction of the annual mortgage insurance premium charged on 30-year forward loans should have a modest impact on private MI business. The cut should benefit the lower FICO brackets – borrowers with credit scores of 679 and lower – a segment in which private MIs write little business, they suggest. “We believe...

The two top banks increased their HEL holdings from midyear, and industry analysts expect home-equity lending to continue to increase in 2015.

There was one piece of good news: Freddie Mac managed to boost its share of the GSE market up to 40.6 percent for all of 2014.

New MBS and ABS issuance last year was down 34.4 percent from 2013, largely due to a huge decline in agency single-family MBS production, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. A total of $1.145 trillion of residential MBS and non-mortgage ABS were issued during 2014, the lowest annual production volume since 2000. Last year got off to a very slow start, with just $517.0 billion in new issuance through the first six months of 2014, before gaining pace during the second half. Total issuance fell 4.8 percent from the third to the fourth quarter. Agency MBS remained...[Includes three data charts]

MBS investors this week continued to bid up the price of agency product in the wake of rock-bottom oil prices and economic fears about Asia, Europe and any oil-producing nation that relies too heavily on the energy sector. According to figures compiled by MBS Quoteline, at one point this week investors were paying 105.10 for Fannie Mae MBS with a coupon of 3.5 percent. Back in October the bid on the Fannie 3.5 was a mere 101.83. “Who would pay 105...

Bank of America’s never-ending litigation woes spilled into 2015 as Ambac Assurance hit the bank with a new lawsuit related to toxic mortgages. Credit Suisse and Wells Fargo also welcomed the new year facing MBS lawsuits. According to analysts at Stone Fox Capital, an investment advisory firm, Ambac is claiming $600 million in losses, which arose from insuring approximately $1.7 billion in MBS transactions from 2005 to 2007. The MBS were issued by Countrywide Financial, which BofA acquired in 2008 and has been the principal cause of its legal headaches ever since. Ambac emerged...

Fannie Mae – and perhaps, Freddie Mac – over the past few years have been quietly extending servicing advances to a handful of large nonbank specialty servicers, but it now appears that market might be shifting to Wall Street. Late last month, Green Tree Servicing signed a $1.2 billion servicing advance facility with Barclays Bank, a 12-fold increase from a previous agreement the nonbank had. Barclays is...

The national director of retail sales at a top-20 ranked lender is out in the cold. Details to follow...

The risk-sharing transactions that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started offering in 2013 have drawn some investors away from buying new jumbo mortgage-backed securities, according to industry participants. The government-sponsored enterprises say the deals that share credit risk with investors help reduce taxpayer risk. However, the returns and risk profile of Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk deals and Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities deals have caused some investors to abandon jumbo MBS and instead invest in the GSEs’ offerings. Aaron Pas, a senior vice president of non-agency portfolio management at American Capital Mortgage Investment, said...