The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s lax attention to Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s handling of aged repurchase demands has resulted in uncollected late fees charged to lenders, according to a new audit by the agency’s Inspector General. The FHFA issued a “contract harmonization directive” in January 2012 calling for the two government-sponsored enterprises to develop “consistent timelines and collection standards for fees and penalties and additional types of penalties and remedies.” During contract harmonization discussions, the report noted...

Public mention of the Treasury memo was first made earlier this month by former Solicitor General Ted Olson at a GSE shareholders rights advocacy forum in Washington.

Issuers of non-agency MBS and agency mortgage sellers have addressed most of the legacy representation and warranty issues that have bedeviled the market for the past few years, according to industry analysts. However, repurchase and buyback issues haven’t been completely resolved as investors and regulators make last grasps at recoveries. Analysts at Compass Point Analytics & Trading estimated that the total losses incurred for rep-and-warrant claims from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the FHA and non-agency MBS investors by publicly traded U.S. originators still in existence will total $89.0 billion. The analysts said lenders have charged off or reserved $88.0 billion for such losses. Compass Point said...

Losses incurred for rep-and-warrant claims tied to MBS could total $89 billion eventually. However, banks have already reserved $88 billion, according to some tallies.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw dramatic declines in the number of underwater mortgage refinances they acquired in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. Mortgage lenders delivered an estimated 103,878 Home Affordable Refinance Program loans to the two government-sponsored enterprises in the fourth quarter, down 49.0 percent from the previous period. Our estimate, based on loan-level MBS data, supplement Federal Housing Finance Agency figures that have been updated only through November. The final three months of last year produced...[Includes one data chart]

Freddie Mac last week announced a $1 billion offering of its Structured Agency Credit Risk debt notes, the government-sponsored enterprise’s first risk-sharing transaction of 2014 and its third such deal since the company rolled out the STACR series last year. The deal is backed by a pool of $32.4 billion 30-year fixed-rate mortgages acquired by Freddie in the second quarter of 2013. More than 65 investors participated in Freddie’s latest STACR deal, and more than 20 of those investors were newcomers, according to Kevin Palmer, vice president of single-family strategic credit costing and structuring for Freddie. “We’ve introduced...

One of the goals of the “servicing alignment initiative” is to limit losses at the GSEs.

For an industry that’s looking at a 30 percent decline in originations, we’re seeing a great deal of SEC 13-d filings by investment funds that are upping their stakes in such players as MGIC, Radian, Ocwen, Walter, EverBank and the like.

Purchase-mortgage lending exceeded refinance production for the first time in five years during the fourth quarter of 2013, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. The shift has been in the works for some time as the potential refinance market began to shrink when interest rates rose late in the second quarter of last year. Mortgage lenders originated an estimated $168 billion of purchase mortgages during the fourth quarter of 2013, accounting for 55.1 percent of total originations. The last time purchase mortgages comprised more than half of new production was back in the fourth quarter of 2008. But purchase-mortgage originations fell...[Includes three data charts]

Less than six weeks into the tenure of the new Federal Housing Finance Agency head, the policy direction of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s regulator remains a mystery, much to the consternation of some industry observers. Since Mel Watt was sworn into a five-year term as FHFA director on Jan. 6, the former North Carolina Democrat congressman has made no public appearances or policy statements, except for canned comments attributed to him in routine FHFA announcements. “Everybody wants...