Non-agency MBS investors looked to the practices of the government-sponsored enterprises when establishing the standards for a deal agent, according to Alessandro Pagani, a portfolio manager and head of securitized assets at Loomis Sayles. “The GSEs were very effective in enforcing their rights as owners of the collateral; they had access to information and real enforcement power to put back loans that needed to be put back and direct servicers,” he said at the recent ABS East conference produced by Information Management Network. The Deal Agent Committee released...

The Milken Institute suggests simply amending the charters of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and the Federal Housing Finance Agency for a smooth transition toward a new secondary mortgage market. Those changes include turning the government-sponsored enterprises into mutuals owned and operated by their seller-servicers and making Ginnie Mae a stand-alone government corporation. Amending the charters could accomplish a wide range of objectives that have eluded legislators and policymakers since the conservatorships, the authors said. Michael Bright, director in the Milken Institute’s Center for Financial Markets, and Ed DeMarco, senior fellow at the institute and former FHFA acting director, said...

Want to make more money? Go work for a nonbank. Want better job security? Work for a depository...

Freddie Mac’s third-quarter MBS business was up 36.0 percent from the previous period, thanks to a whopping 43.6 percent jump in purchase-mortgage business…

Cash-out refis are propping up the refi market, said one analyst.

In a letter to its shareholders, Fairholme called the GSEs “two of the best businesses ever owned by the funds.”

The MSR package has a heavy West Coast concentration, MIAC said.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized $135.69 billion of single-family purchase mortgages during the third quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of mortgage-backed securities disclosures by the two government-sponsored enterprises. That was up a hefty 26.2 percent from the previous quarter, and it represented the biggest quarterly flow of purchase mortgages to the GSEs since the housing market collapse. Although the loans were pooled in MBS issued during the third quarter, a significant number of them were actually originated during the April-June cycle. The third quarter typically has...[Includes three data tables]

Wells Fargo – no doubt – is taking it on the chin for its “account fabrication” scandal tied to credit cards and deposits, but so far the damage has yet to seep into its mortgage business in a major way, but reports suggest certain correspondents are balking at doing business with the megabank. Dave Akre, managing director of Five Oaks Investment Corp., said he knows some loan officers working for Wells correspondents who are no longer offering the megabank’s jumbo products “due to recent issues.” Those “issues,” he pointed out in an interview with Inside Mortgage Finance, involve...

A group of New York Baptist clergy, mostly in Harlem and the Bronx, has joined the chorus of those raising concerns about potential Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform efforts that would compromise affordable housing goals. In a letter to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, the 38 religious leaders echoed fears raised by other groups that Congress might hand the government-sponsored enterprises’ business over to big banks. They contend that the biggest banks have “consistently displayed a disinterest” in lending to minority-based communities and lack a “duty to serve” commitment comparable to the one the GSEs have. “Efforts to transfer the mortgage securitization platforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the hands of the big banks create...