With just a week to go, the petition drive by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac common shareholders asking the White House to “restore fairness” to the value of their lost investment looks like it will fall woefully short of the required number of signatures. Created on June 1, the petition posted on the White House website calls for Congress, the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency to enact a method “to provide fairness and protection” to common shareholders of the two GSEs “and enable shareholders to have participation in the recovery value of their stock.”

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has no interest in revisiting a program that Fannie Mae spent a year developing to directly purchase force-placed insurance even as it solicited input last week from “stakeholders” during a two-day, closed-door working group. The invitation-only meeting, closed to the public and press, drew some 80 attendees representing big banks, insurers, insurance brokers, other regulators and representatives of industry and consumer groups who weighed in as the Finance Agency decides its policy direction on force-placed or lender-placed insurance. According to those in attendance at the meeting, the FHFA officials were cordial but the agenda was strictly focused on concerns that force-placed premiums might be too high and that the industry lacks serious competition.

Aligning Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s underwriting standards and creating clear standards for representations and warranties is essential for a smooth transition to a sustainable secondary market operating with an explicit, limited government guaranty, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The MBA’s new concept paper – the fourth of a five-part plan – suggests the Federal Housing Finance Agency set parameters for acceptable underwriting criteria by both GSEs, then allow them to offer credit terms within a “clear outer boundary.” “If we are to have a fully functioning secondary market that provides sustainable access to credit for qualified borrowers, then the development of transparent and consistent credit underwriting standards are of the utmost importance,” said the MBA.

The amount of home mortgage debt outstanding continued its post-crisis downward spiral in the early months of 2013, although the agency servicing market grew slightly, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside Mortgage Finance. The Federal Reserve reported total home mortgage debt outstanding of $9.868 trillion as of the end of March, down 0.6 percent from the previous quarter. Under pressure from falling house prices and the collapse of the non-agency market, the supply of MDO has been in steady decline since peaking at its all-time high of $11.195 trillion at the end of 2007. Single-family servicing associated...[Includes two data charts]

There is still no official word on when the Senate Banking Committee will take up the nomination of Rep. Mel Watt to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

With rates rising and liquidity increasing, more mortgage servicing portfolios are hitting the auction market.

When rates rise, loan officers begin to bite their nails, unless they are heavily reliant on purchase-money loans.

The Corker-Warner GSE bill could see the light of day next Tuesday. Meanwhile, HLSS is selling more shares to the public.

Some industry experts say mortgage executives will not feel safe about originating – or securitizing – more than a miniscule amount of non-agency loans until the government stops taking “retribution” against the housing finance industry for the sins of the housing bust. Lewis Ranieri, who helped launched the mortgage-backed security business, said the biggest victims of the mortgage crisis are minority borrowers and young workers who no longer qualify for credit because of tight underwriting guidelines promulgated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since they went into conservatorship back in September 2008. But tight underwriting isn’t the sole problem, Ranieri argued...

Mortgage lenders that sell loans to the government-sponsored enterprises are seeing a significant increase in the volume of buyback reviews on recently originated mortgages, according to a new analysis of repurchase activity disclosures by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter. Through the first three months of 2013, GSE sellers had already repurchased some $80.6 million of loans securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during 2012. That was more than double the volume of repurchases of mortgages originated in 2011. Loan quality didn’t deteriorate...