The ongoing uncertainty about the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is weighing on the mortgage industry and it’s only going to get worse with time, said the former head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency this week. Edward DeMarco, now a senior fellow in residence for the Milken Institute’s Center for Financial Markets, warned that with the government in effective control of the mortgage market, the risk grows of capital allocation and pricing decisions made through the prism of political calculation rather than due to sound, market driven principle.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s most recent settlement of non-agency mortgage-backed securities lawsuit has one consumer group seeing red as it claims taxpayers will ultimately get stuck with the cost of the bank’s multi-million dollar payout. Late last week, the FHFA announced a $550 million legal deal with HSBC North American Holdings, leaving just two civil cases tied to nonprime MBS issuance still unresolved.

There is little enthusiasm in the mortgage market for higher guaranty fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, various industry groups indicated in input letters to the GSEs’ regulator. In June, the Federal Housing Finance Agency issued a call for public comment on how the GSEs should calculate g-fees and whether the FHFA should proceed with a 10 basis point g-fee hike announced last year. In one of his first acts as FHFA director in January, Mel Watt postponed the g-fee hike pending further study.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s proposed capital requirements for private mortgage insurers would raise costs for borrowers but there is a need for new standards, according to industry group comments. The Mortgage Bankers Association, National Association of Realtors and several private MI companies have urged the Federal Housing Finance Agency to ease proposed capital requirements for private MIs.

Most mortgage lenders expect profit margins to remain steady in coming months, but more of them are bracing for reduced earnings and fewer anticipate increases than in the past, according to results from a Fannie Mae survey released this week. Just over half (51 percent) of the 185 participants said they expect profit margins on loan production activity to be unchanged in the next three months. But a third of the lenders predicted tighter margins, up from 29 percent in the previous survey, mostly because of ...

The Senate’s housing finance reform bill would save the government some $60 billion over 10 years according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, but don’t hold your breath waiting for the windfall, say critics. Earlier this month, the CBO issued its estimate, which concluded that replacing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a new securitization program that couples a first-loss position for private capital with back-end government insurance could reduce “direct spending” by $60 billion over the 2015-2024 period.

Experts Laud FHFA’s Plan for ‘Single Security,’ But Urge Quicker Arrival at Goal. The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s “single security” proposal for a generic Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac MBS is “well-thought out” and “worthy of serious consideration,” but the agency should pick up the pace in its implementation to avoid making the solution part of the problem, according to a paper from the Urban Institute. Lewis Ranieri, chairman of Ranieri Partners, and Laurie Goodman, director of the UI’s Housing Policy Center, expressed concern that the FHFA “may be contemplating a slower pace in the project than it warrants.”

Together, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in August posted a combined increase in the volume of single-family mortgages securitized, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. Fannie and Freddie issued $61.1 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities in August, a 5.5 percent increase from July.However, August's MBS issuance was down 56.7 percent on a year-to-date basis.

The biggest chunk of purchase business for the GSEs were loans ranging from $200,000 to $300,000, which accounted for 29.4 percent of their business.

Purchase-mortgage originations jumped 44.3 percent from the first quarter of 2014 to the second quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking, with first-time homebuyers representing about 43.9 percent of agency activity in the sector. Purchase mortgages accounted for 64.1 percent of total mortgage production during the second quarter. That’s the highest purchase share since 1995, when financing for home purchases represented 67.2 percent of total originations. At the midway point of 2014, purchase-mortgage originations were up...[Includes four data charts]