In order to provide a benchmark that helps the private sector price mortgage credit, policy makers need to make an effort to replicate the standardization and uniformity currently provided by agency mortgage-backed securities, the managing director of Barclays Capital told lawmakers last week.

During the past three years, the GSEs have steadily increased their commercial mortgage-backed security issuance, assuming a role of dominance that private investment banks once held, concluded a recent report by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan modification and overall loss mitigation activity declined again in the second quarter, driven by decreases in completed loan mods and forbearance plans and continuing a downward trend begun a year ago, a new analysis of data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency by Inside The GSEs finds. Total loss mitigation activity – total home retention efforts and foreclosure alternatives combined – slipped 1.5 percent in the second quarter of the year to 246,879 and was down 34.3 percent from year ago levels. Our analysis was based on the FHFA’s Second Quarter 2011 Foreclosure Prevention & Refinance Report.

State regulators are gradually working through the pile of licensing applications submitted by mortgage companies and loan originators. The total number of unique entities holding state licenses increased 7.2 percent during the second quarter, reaching 140,421, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of data from the National Mortgage Licensing System. The vast majority of those licenses (76 percent) are held by individual loan officers. Regulators still had some 35,024 licensing applications pending at the end of June, but that was down 23 percent from the previous quarter. And the number of new applications submitted during...

Mortgage securitization rates remained at record levels through the first half of 2011, reflecting a sharp decline in new primary market production and a surge of agency issuance early in the year. A new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals that mortgage securitization activity in the first half of 2011 equaled 96.0 percent of loans originated during the same period. That compares to an 84.9 percent securitization rate for all of 2010 and an 85.6 percent rate – the record high – back in 2009. Because it can take weeks or even months before a newly originated mortgage hits the capital markets as collateral backing an MBS, there is a significant slippage between... [Includes one data chart]

One of the primary sponsors of mortgage refinance legislation pending in the Senate told colleagues this week that her legislation could save homeowners and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac tens of millions of dollars, while acknowledging that it could cost the Federal Reserve billions of dollars in lost investment income. Testifying on behalf of her legislation before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, said S. 170, the Helping Responsible Homeowners Act of 2011, “would result in up to 54,000 fewer defaults and produce a net savings up to $100 million for Fannie and Freddie.” Homeowners would see immediate relief. “A one and a half percent reduction in...

The ongoing debate over the need for a government guarantee to sustain the benefits of the to-be-announced MBS market moved this week to the Senate Housing, Banking and Urban Development Committee, where researchers covered both sides of the issue for a group of lawmakers who aren’t likely to act on their counsel any time soon. “Proponents of privatization ignore that the jumbo market does benefit from a government guarantee indirectly in multiple ways,” said Adam Levitin, professor of law at Georgetown University. “The jumbo market has long aped the standards set by the [government-sponsored enterprises] in the conforming market, including...

The efforts of the White House, in concert with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to jumpstart the underperforming GSE refinance program is almost certain to disappoint when final details are made public, due in no small part to overpromised and inflated expectations, say mortgage market watchers.FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco said his agency is “carefully reviewing” the two-year old Home Affordable Refinance Program with the White House in order to help a greater number of underwater Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers into lower-rate loans.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced late this week that he has opened an investigation into a reported deal struck last month in which Fannie Mae agreed to buy some of Bank of America’s home-loan portfolio.In a letter sent to Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Edward DeMarco, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, requested the FHFA provide the committee documents and a “full explanation of the agency’s decision-making process” regarding the purchase.

The massive legal action that the Federal Housing Finance Agency has initiated against many of the nation’s big lenders on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needs to be resolved forthwith, says an industry attorney, before a prolonged litigation “feeding frenzy” and resulting uncertainty paralyze mortgage market participants.Two weeks ago, the Finance Agency filed legal papers contending that the 17 financial institutions which sold Fannie and Freddie $196 billion of mortgage-backed securities, mostly between 2005 and 2008, duped the GSEs into buying tens of billions of dollars of MBS that went south after the housing bubble burst.