G-fees range from 50 to 55 basis points. Prior to the housing bust, some seller/servicers had g-fee payments as low as 12 basis points.

Ruth Lee, executive vice president of TCS, expects a big year in the scratch-and-dent market, thanks to the GSEs.

Any monkeying with the GSE charters must get past two of the most powerful lobbying groups in all of housing finance...

The money will flow directly into the U.S. Treasury Department, which controls the senior preferred shares of the two government-sponsored enterprises.

The FHFA proposal, however, could spell trouble for certain nonbank servicers with limited resources.

On loans with LTVs ranging from 90 percent to 95 percent, for example, GSE pricing was better for all borrowers with credit scores over 620. But things are different now.

Freddie Mac is set to sell a first-loss tranche on a Structured Agency Credit Risk transaction for the first time. The deal priced this week and the $880 million STACR 2015-DN1 is scheduled to settle next week. On previous STACR deals, Freddie has retained a tranche equaling at least the first 30 basis points of loss. Investor demand for the government-sponsored enterprises’ risk-sharing transactions has been strong but some have called for the GSEs to offer first-loss tranches, which can offer higher yields than the tranches that are more buffered from losses. Freddie said...

Wells Fargo was the largest Fannie/Freddie servicer at yearend with $791.0 billion, followed by Chase Home Finance ($429.1 billion) and Bank of America ($260.4 billion).

Securitization of income-property mortgages continued to post strong new issuance numbers in 2014, with the non-agency commercial MBS sector doing particularly well, according to a new market analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. A total of $164.77 billion of securities backed by commercial mortgages were issued last year, down just 0.6 percent from 2013’s level, which was the high-water mark since just before the financial collapse. And non-agency CMBS production was up 11.6 percent in 2014, at $96.48 billion. Agency MBS issuance fell...[Includes one data chart]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are more than halfway towards reaching their goal of reducing their retained mortgage portfolios to no more than $250 billion each by 2018, according to Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt. Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee this week, Watt said the two government-sponsored enterprises have developed plans to meet their investment targets, $250 billion each, in accordance with terms of their conservatorship. As of Sept. 30, 2014, Freddie’s portfolio stood...