As the Federal Housing Finance Agency ponders possible improvements to the government’s Home Affordable Refinance Program, calls from different corners of the industry are growing louder for the FHFA to end fees charged to borrowers who refinance Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued $177.19 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities during the third quarter of 2011, a modest 14.3 percent improvement following two straight quarterly declines during the first six months of this year.The recent July-September cycle represented one of the weakest quarters historically for GSE MBS production since the financial markets crashed at the end of 2008.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency knew or should have known about improper foreclosure practices involving Fannie Mae affiliated law firms long before the Finance Agency began a review, according to the regulator’s official watchdog.The FHFA Office of Inspector General’s latest audit found that the FHFA did not investigate complaints about Fannie’s Retained Attorney Network until August 2010 in the wake of negative news reports alleging that RAN attorneys had engaged in inappropriate foreclosure practices, such as routinely filing false documents in court proceedings and “robo-signing.”

The ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is calling on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to “give serious consideration” to shuttering Fannie Mae’s Retained Attorney Network, but not before answering questions and providing documents about the FHFA’s oversight of the program.

In five years, the mortgage servicing business will likely be dramatically different than it is now or has been in the past, experts say, and getting there won’t be easy. “Homeowners think servicing is about them, that the industry should be trying to solve their problems,” said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State, during a panel at this week’s Mortgage Bankers Association annual convention. “But the servicer is working primarily for the investor,” he said, adding that the “legal structure of servicing makes the homeowner extraneous.” Although there is widespread acknowledgement that change is necessary, the significant...

A scathing criticism of the way the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Freddie Mac handled a $1.35 billion settlement with Bank of America could cause the regulator and the government-sponsored enterprises to tighten repurchase enforcement – and consequently inflate the buyback problem, according to litigation experts. Speaking on a recent webinar hosted by Inside Mortgage Finance, experts said a report by the FHFA’s Office of the Inspector General which found flaws in the BofA settlement approval process, could push the GSEs and their regulator to lean harder on major lenders to repurchase “bad loans.” This, in turn, could...

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae dominate the mortgage market as they never have before, but all three MBS agencies are committing significant resources to overhauling their systems to prepare for an uncertain future. Freddie Mac “fully gets” the idea that the company does not control its future, said Ed Haldeman, CEO at the government-sponsored enterprise, during a panel session at this week’s annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association. But reform proposals that feature multiple MBS securitizers funded with private capital, such as the one put forth by the MBA, look like “a pretty decent road map to the...

Chase Home Finance surged past Bank of America to become the second most prolific producer of agency MBS during the third quarter, according to a new ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. Chase has played third fiddle behind BofA and Wells Fargo for the past few years, and still ranked third in agency MBS production on a year-to-date basis. But BofA has been dumping mortgage production capacity and trying to claw its way to higher ground while Chase has made modest gains in market share. Those trends are likely to accelerate in coming months as BofA closes down its correspondent business after failing to find a...(Includes two data charts)

New issuance of mortgage- and asset-backed securities faltered in the third quarter, although production levels were gaining strength in September. A new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals that $330.12 billion of ABS and residential MBS were issued during the third quarter, a decline of 6.3 percent from the previous three-month period. The surprisingly tepid increase in residential MBS issuance was not nearly enough to offset a substantial drop in non-mortgage ABS activity. Non-mortgage ABS issuance fell 43.4 percent from the second to the third quarter, sinking to $24.84 billion and reversing the very...(Includes one data chart)

Ginnie Mae is following its own path in exploring potential changes to servicer compensation, a project that parallels the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Joint Initiative on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac servicing compensation. As part of the FHA’s effort to improve default servicing, Ginnie Mae and other government housing agencies will be working separately to develop better claims mechanisms and pooling services as well as clearer risk and warranty delineations to improve the value of securitizations, the FHFA said. In a discussion paper, the FHFA, which oversees Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, said ...