The once deadlocked but now all-but-certain confirmation of Rep. Mel Watt, D-NC, to be the new director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency has left industry observers uncertain as to the continued policy direction of the FHFA. Based on client conversations, Compass Point Research & Trading Analyst Isaac Boltansky speculated in an analysis that the FHFA’s announcement last week to retain its baseline maximum conforming loan limit was influenced by Watt’s widely expected, pending confirmation.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency may be close to picking a chairman to head the common securitization platform project, which still does not have a chief executive officer, according to one source briefed on the matter. This official, who requested his name not be used, said there are two prospects for the chairman slot, “but FHFA still hasn’t decided on one.” The CSP, formally known as Common Securitization Solutions LLC, is a joint venture equally owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. CSS recently signed a lease on office space in Bethesda, MD, just outside the District of Columbia.

Freddie Mac this week racked up another settlement in the GSE’s recent ongoing series of mortgage buyback deals when Bank of America announced it will pay $404 million to settle repurchase obligations tied to loans sold between 2000 and 2009. The payment also compensates Freddie for “certain past losses and potential future losses relating to denials, rescissions and cancellations of mortgage insurance,” the GSE said. The amount is less $13 million of repurchases already made.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle announced that its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has amended the Bank’s consent order in keeping with its improved financial performance. In October 2010, the FHFA directed the Seattle Bank to implement steps to stabilize its business, improve its capital classification and return to normal operations.

Reform-minded lawmakers should move with all deliberate speed to restructure, recapitalize and remove Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the government’s hands or risk the taxpayers’ stake in the mortgage market, experts told members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. The committee’s hearing prior to the Thanksgiving break focused on when and how to terminate the charters of the two government-sponsored enterprises, as well as whether current revenue held by Fannie and Freddie should be used to offset the cost of the new system.

Freddie Rescinds Fraud Training Requirement. Freddie Mac has withdrawn a requirement announced in September mandating fraud training in Bulletin 2013-13, issued Nov. 15. Freddie had required that seller/servicers provide third-party vendors retained to perform functions relating to origination and servicing of mortgages with training on fraud prevention, detection and reporting. The GSE decided to revisit the issue. In addition, the bulletin updates payment history verification requirements for manually underwritten mortgages, and announces that eligibility requirements applicable to higher-priced mortgage loans, previously announced in August, are applicable to higher-priced covered transactions (as defined in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage rule) and not solely to HPMLs.

The strength of the non-agency jumbo market, at a time when securitization of these loans has slowed, suggests there is plenty of investor appetite for non-agency jumbos.

The lift in jumbo mortgage production during the third quarter of 2013 came from the non-agency segment of the market, while new originations of “conforming jumbo” loans faltered, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside Mortgage Finance. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA financed $25.48 billion in single-family loans that exceeded $417,000 during the third quarter, down 15.5 percent from the second quarter. Meanwhile, non-agency jumbo originations edged up 2.7 percent during the third quarter, hitting a six-year high. The strength of the non-agency jumbo market at a time when securitization of these loans has slowed...[Includes three data charts]

The mortgage insurance industry is anxiously awaiting new risk-to-capital rules from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, hoping that the regulator will go easy on an industry that is beginning to recover from a years-long debacle and reclaim market share from the FHA. Private MI executives close to the matter told Inside Mortgage Finance that the FHFA will likely issue a minimum risk-to-capital ratio of 18:1, a tougher standard than the current 25:1, but there is also talk of a phase-in period and “bifurcation” for legacy versus new companies. According to its securities filings, National MI, a new MI, has agreed...

Expect the largest U.S. banks to continue to feel the effects of the mortgage implosion as they pony up over $100 billion to get out from under their legacy mortgage litigation issues, according to an analysis by Standard and Poor’s. Since 2009, S&P noted that the big banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo – together have paid or set aside more than $45 billion for mortgage representation-and-warranty issues and have incurred some $50 billion in combined legal expenses. This does not include...