Roughly 88 percent of lenders said they expect to grow their mortgage origination business in 2016...

Sources close to D’Urso said his termination by Radian was a “total surprise” to him as well.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency cautioned that the pilots are in their early stages...

After rates plunged earlier in the year, servicing auctions slowed somewhat, but are once again hitting the market.

February’s new issuance was also the lowest monthly total for the GSEs since May 2014...

According to survey figures from Inside Mortgage Finance, wholesale/broker production accounted for 9.6 percent of fundings in the fourth quarter of 2015...

Freddie Mac has launched a project to correct some “operational deficiencies” in how it transfers money in and out of mortgage-backed securities trusts. The GSE said in its 2015 10-K filing that the issue has not had a material impact on its earnings or on investors in its MBS. Freddie explained that seller/servicers deposit various funds – such as mortgage principal and interest payments owed to MBS investors and guarantee fees due to the GSE – into custodial accounts for securitization trusts. The funds owed to the company are classified as restricted until they are transferred to an operating cash account. Management, however, determined that Freddie has not maintained detailed pool-by-pool records of funds in the custodial account...

Agency issuance of single-family MBS declined by 9.5 percent from January to February, largely based on a seasonal slump in purchase-mortgage activity, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae produced a total of $80.49 billion of single-family MBS in February, their lowest combined monthly output since November 2014. The biggest decline was in purchase-mortgage activity, which fell 14.9 percent for the month. The refinance sector held up...[Includes two data tables]

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed an argument in a whistleblower case, ruling that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not “federal instruments” for the purposes of the False Claims Act, a federal statute that’s been used aggressively against FHA lenders. The FCA imposes liability on persons that defraud government programs and was originally enacted to penalize private parties that profited illegally in selling supplies to the U.S. Army during the Civil War. In the case of United States ex rel. Adams v. Aurora Loan Services, Inc., et al., the government argued...

Bank of America introduced a new affordable lending program last week that allows 3 percent downpayments and no required reserve funds in most instances. The bank partnered with Freddie Mac and Self-Help Ventures Fund, a Durham, NC-based nonprofit, to offer conforming loans to borrowers whose income doesn’t exceed 100 percent of the area median income. There’s also no private mortgage insurance on the loans as “Self-Help Ventures Fund is taking the first loss position in the event of a loan default through a recourse agreement,” said a Freddie spokesman. The Affordable Loan Solution mortgage was designed to let creditworthy homebuyers who meet specific income limits and other requirements to become homeowners at an affordable entry point, said...