With just over four weeks left in 2014, investment bankers expect a flurry of bulk deals to hit the market. But whether they close or not is a different matter. “There are definitely several deals – both large and small – that are being considered,” said Tom Piercy, managing member of Interactive Mortgage Advisors. “We are working on four or five deals totaling $10 billion.” Piercy said he wasn’t at liberty to provide details about the transactions since some have yet to be finalized. In two recently announced auctions, IMA is selling a $3.2 billion package of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage servicing rights and a $1.6 billion pool.The brokerage firm also is in the process of selling a New York-based mortgage ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are testing parts of the new common securitization platform and are expected to have the system largely built in 2015. But the GSEs have a lot of work to do building interfaces for their systems to work with the new platform while the joint venture that’s running the CSP won’t be functional for several years, according to two recent Federal Housing Finance Agency reports.

Fannie Mae has priced its final risk-sharing transaction of the year, a nearly $1.5 billion offering that priced wider than previous deals, the GSE announced last week. The $1.49 billion note is the GSE’s fourth transaction under its Connecticut Avenue Securities series of 2014. Last year, the Federal Housing Finance Agency ordered both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to shrink the GSEs’ role in the U.S. housing market.

Fannie, Freddie Conforming Loan Limits Mostly Unchanged for 2015. The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week said that conforming loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2015 would remain at current levels in most markets. For much of the country, the conforming loan limit for one-unit properties will remain at $417,000. The loan limits are established under the terms of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and are calculated each year.

Together, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in October posted a combined decline in the volume of single-family mortgages securitized, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. Fannie and Freddie issued $63.1 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities in October, a 1.5 percent decrease from September. On a year-to-date basis, October’s MBS issuance dropped an even steeper 50.6 percent.

Industry groups say they are generally pleased with last week’s more detailed update to Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s representation-and-warranty framework, but lenders remain expectant of additional details from the Federal Housing Finance Agency going forward. The new rules, retroactive to January 2013, provide that lenders might not be required to repurchase loans that contain data inaccuracies or misrepresentations of buyers’ qualifications, unless those inaccuracies and misrepresentations are “significant” or appear in multiple loans. The clarifications of life-of-loan exclusions announced by the government-sponsored enterprises are designed...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week said that conforming loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2015 would remain at current levels in most markets. Some 46 counties will get...

The development of a common securitization platform for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the progression of a single government-sponsored enterprise security remains an “important priority” for the Federal Housing Finance Agency over the next year, according to the FHFA. The GSE conservator noted in its “2014 Performance and Accountability Report” and the FHFA’s revised “Strategic Plan: Fiscal Years 2015-2019,” both issued last week, that the project is proceeding with deliberate speed. “Most of the software needed for the platform’s core functionality has been put...

The most significant blockages to the return of a healthy and sustainable non-agency residential MBS market in the United States are low volume issuance, regulation, weak AAA demand and missing structural reforms, according to top market professionals. “What’s holding back the recovery?” asked Rui Pereira, managing director at Fitch Ratings, during a panel discussion at a residential MBS reform symposium sponsored by the Structured Finance Industry Group and Information Management Network in New York City earlier this month. “Other sectors have rebounded and we’re starting to see new asset classes emerge. And yet, we’re seeing very little momentum in our market. So the question is, what’s stalling the RMBS recovery?” In the run-up to the discussion, Pereira polled...

Prior to FHFA’s new directive, Fannie and Freddie required homeowners who have been through foreclosure and want to buy their home back to pay the entire amount owed on the mortgage.