Some loan brokers we spoke with were skeptical about the RE/MAX concept...

Since Genworth is a counter-party to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the GSEs must approve the change of control as well.

CBO’s comments were contained in a report that takes a “what if” approach to allowing Fannie and Freddie to retain as much as $5 billion of capital a year for 10 years...

Freddie said the revised suite is “designed to take costs out of the loan origination process.”

For Mel Watt, he's at the halfway point...

Freddie Mac has begun pilot testing its new Dealer Direct system for swapping legacy participation certificates for new single securities with a select group of dealers, the government-sponsored enterprise said in an update issued this week. In transitioning to the single security, Freddie will give all investors in its existing MBS that have a 45-day payment cycle the option to exchange them for the new 55-day securities. That process will be transacted through the Dealer Direct electronic platform. Holders of legacy MBS will work...

Trade groups representing a broad spectrum of mortgage and securitization businesses generally support an effort by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop more credit-risk transfer options, but some cautioned that the government-sponsored enterprises should maintain a level playing field. In response to a Federal Housing Finance Agency request for comments on the CRT program, the Mortgage Bankers Association and U.S. Mortgage Insurers repeated their calls for programs to allow loan sellers to buy deeper private MI in exchange for reduced GSE guaranty fees. To date, the vast majority of Fannie and Freddie CRT deals have been...

The jumbo market is dominated by retail lenders to a greater extent than either conventional-conforming production or government-insured lending, according to a new analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. A group of 19 top jumbo lenders reported $92.45 billion in jumbo originations through their retail operations during the first half of 2016. That represented 76.8 percent of the $120.37 billion in total jumbo production for the group. The 19 lenders accounted...[Includes one data table]

Jumbo mortgages accounted for 18.3 percent of total first-lien originations in 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data recently released by federal regulators. That was virtually unchanged from the 18.1 percent share that jumbo loans held in the 2014 HMDA data. The analyses match conventional loan amounts and county information about the secured property to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac conforming loan limits, including adjustments for high-cost markets, in effect at the time. Purchase mortgages accounted...[Includes two data tables]

A glitch in the federal government’s Servicemembers Civil Relief Act website that had been churning out false verifications of soldiers’ active-duty status has been fixed, the Defense Manpower Data Center of the Department of Defense has announced.The bug responsible for the false negative results was removed after rendering the website inoperable for several days. The DMDC is urging active servicemembers to re-run their SCRA certificate requests if they have reason to doubt any negative results returned by the website. The DMDC shut down the website temporarily on Oct. 4 making it impossible for mortgage lenders to verify their or their vendor-partners’ compliance with the SCRA. The statute provides certain protections from civil actions against servicemembers who are called to active duty. It restricts or limits actions against active-duty military personnel in areas such as mortgages, rental and lease agreements, credit-card interest rates, tax liability, lawsuits and other debt obligations. The SCRA certificate provides information only for the purpose of verifying an individual’s active-duty status for a given time period to ...