Yet another plan to reshape the mortgage market has been published, this one from noted housing economist Mark Zandi, and Ellen Seidman, once the nation's top S&L regulator.

MBA pushes for GSE AU engines to be synchronized. Meanwhile, a factoid of mortgage history: Treasury chief Paulson wanted Fannie and Freddie put in receivership.

Former GSE regulator James Lockhart noted that only one “catastrophic” guarantor is needed, though he stressed that “you need more than one issuer.”

Only a crazy person would speculate in GSE junior preferred stock. Meanwhile, Dr. Frankenstein reveals himself.

The American Bankers Association asked the CFPB for more detailed guidance on the “temporary qualified mortgage” for government-sponsored enterprise and agency mortgage loans. Earlier this year, the bureau proposed some amendments to its mortgage rules under the Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act and the Truth in Lending Act. Among them are some proposed revised commentaries regarding the standards that a creditor must meet when relying upon a written guide or the automated underwriting system of one of the GSEs, the...

New single-family MBS issuance accounted for a record 90.1 percent of home loan originations during the first quarter of 2013, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. An estimated $500.0 billion of new home mortgages were originated during the first three months of the year, down 4.8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2012, as refinance activity began to weaken. But mortgage securitization activity declined at a slower pace, falling just 0.6 percent in the first quarter. That pushed...[Includes one data chart]

Overt acts of housing discrimination may have declined significantly but subtle forms of racial bias continue against minority home purchasers or renters nationwide, according to a new study released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Urban Institute.

Wells Fargo has reached an agreement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and fair housing advocacy groups to improve its handling of foreclosed and abandoned homes and resolve allegations of discrimination in the maintenance and marketing of real estate-owned properties. The National Fair Housing Alliance and several other fair housing groups filed a complaint with HUD in April last year after observing that Wells’ foreclosed homes in minority neighborhoods did not receive the same treatment and care as the bank’s REO properties in white neighborhoods. The NFHA, which conducted an ...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is holding a two-day, closed-door working group Thursday and Friday with force-placed insurance stakeholders following the FHFA’s recent actions to shutter an insurance proposal by Fannie Mae and its policy proposal to develop a set of force-placed aligned standards.

The federal government seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by extra-legal means during the 2008 financial crisis and then went out of its way to curtail the two government-sponsored enterprises’ profits while unjustly denying GSE shareholders just compensation for their deliberately devalued holdings, according to a lawsuit filed this week. The suit filed by GSE shareholders in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, DC, asserts the takeover of Fannie and Freddie by the Federal Housing Finance Agency was “unlawful and unwarranted” and an unconstitutional violation of due process which cost investors billions of dollars. “Even if a statutory basis existed...