Purchase-mortgage lending provided most of the oomph that drove the 23.6 percent increase in total mortgage originations during the second quarter, but refinance activity still accounted for slightly over half of total production. Lenders funded $222 billion of first-lien purchase mortgages during the second quarter, a 59.7 percent increase from the first three months of 2015, according to Inside Mortgage Finance estimates. That was just shy of the $223 billion of purchase mortgages originated back in the third quarter of 2013, a figure that included some second-mortgage production associated with purchase loans. Meanwhile, refinance lending rose...[Includes three data tables]

Fannie Mae last week replaced its MyCommunityMortgage affordable lending program with a new product called HomeReady that allows borrowers to get housing counseling online and integrated with Fannie’s Desktop Underwriter system. Both programs are targeted to lower- and middle-income borrowers in select communities. Barry Zigas, president of Zigas and Associates, a consulting firm focused on housing, said HomeReady is a “game changing announcement” in his blog post this week, especially pointing to the product’s adoption of a standardized consumer education requirement and the incorporation of the product into Fannie’s Desktop Underwriter. Zigas formerly headed Fannie’s affordable housing unit. Its new functionality through DU will allow...

Who cares about large hedging losses? Not the FHFA, which so far has shown no interest in increasing the allowable amount of capital the two can retain...

Ginnie’s big advantage is that it gets all the FHA and VA loans, while the GSEs so far have not gotten much traction in their reduced-downpayment programs.

The CHLA noted that almost 99 percent of depositories are exempt from exams conducted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Pershing Square and Perry Capital began loading up on GSE “junior” preferred two years ago, but not because they thought it was a great investment...

Almost 60 percent of the repurchases made in the first half of 2015 involved loans that were securitized by the GSEs in 2013 and 2014.

The resignation of Stonegate Mortgage CEO Jim Cutillo didn’t do much for the stock price of the company Monday.

Fannie Mae rolled out HomeReady this week, a revised affordable lending product to replace its MyCommunityMortgage program, which focuses on helping borrowers with low- and moderate-incomes obtain mortgage credit. With lender input, the GSE made a number of changes to make the product more efficient for both lenders and borrowers. Fannie will add it to Desktop Underwriter later this year. HomeReady expects to create business opportunities for lenders serving the changing demographics and the shift in borrower needs. “I think it will definitely give lenders some additional flexibility in being able to qualify moderate income and lower income borrowers that they don’t have today,” said Glen Corso, executive director of Community Mortgage Lenders of America.

First-time homebuyers make up a significant part of the purchase-mortgage market, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a hard time competing with Ginnie Mae, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis of loan-level data.The three agencies securitized $118.90 billion of first-time buyer mortgages during the first six months of 2015, but Ginnie accounted for over half (52.4 percent) of the business. Ginnie’s big advantage is that it gets all the FHA and VA loans, while the GSEs so far have not gotten much traction in their reduced-downpayment programs. First-time buyers typically have less savings for a downpayment and often have less-stellar credit profiles. In the first half of this year, the average loan-to-value ratio for...(charts)