Democrats and Republicans in Congress want to know what it will take to expand real estate investment trust participation in GSE credit risk transfers. They wrote the Securities and Exchange Commission last week asking it to help alleviate the regulatory challenges REITs face when it comes to participating in credit risk transfers. “Specifically, we are requesting your expertise in unlocking a meaningful amount of capital in the form of mortgage real estate investment trusts to participate in these transactions,” said the letter from the 13 congressman.They cited the FHFA’s goal to grow the credit risk-sharing program with an expanded investor base and said that mortgage REITs would be a likely candidate if the obstacles were removed.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been targeting a portion of their nonperforming loans to nonprofit organizations, but reaching those groups can be a challenge. So far, each has sold one pool to two different nonprofit groups in New Jersey. Freddie Mac announced its very first NPL sale to a nonprofit buyer back in late December. It sold $18.4 million in loans to the Community Loan Fund of New Jersey, a non-profit, private and minority and women-owned business. There were 103 loans in the Florida-based pool with an average balance of $178,300 and they were about 33 months delinquent on average. The transaction is expected to settle in February.

FHFA FHLB Classification Guidance. The Federal Housing Finance Agency put out guidance this week on the classification of investment securities at the Federal Home Loan Banks. It is adopting the 2013 Uniform Agreement for FHLBank supervisory purposes. Where FHFA’s rule and guidance and the 2013 Uniform Agreement may conflict, the FHFA said its rules and guidance will apply. The agreement included FHLBanks using sound and conservative assumptions as they pertain to upgrades and it provides classification approach examples that provide boundaries for upgrading classified securities. Freddie Prices $1 Billion STACR Offering. As the first out of eight Structured Agency Credit Risk offerings planned through October 2016, Freddie Mac...

Also, the agency servicing market has continued to become less top-heavy.

As one source close to the company noted: Redwood “just couldn’t make the math work” in that line of business.

Nonbank institutions continued to expand their footprint in agency mortgage servicing rights last year, thanks to both their growing share of new originations and a hefty dose of MSR transfers, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. At the end of 2015, some $5.931 trillion of home mortgages were connected to mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. That was up a modest 0.8 percent from the same period back in 2014 and included a small 0.3 percent increase from the third to the fourth quarter of last year. These figures are based on agency MBS disclosures that typically vary slightly from aggregate data released by the three agencies. Nonbanks accounted...[Includes two data tables]

Ocwen, in particular, will need to tell investors exactly how they plan to become a top-10 originator, something that seems like a long shot right now...

Rumors of a large layoff at Redwood first broke Monday...

However, for all of 2015, private MI volume in Fannie/Freddie MBS was up 25.2 percent from 2014...

In the past, some lenders have complained about forced buybacks because of loan defects even when a mortgage is current.