Weeks after the Trump administration banned the practice, the Senate Judiciary Committee is looking into whether the Obama administration used mortgage-related settlement funds to funnel money to political organizations that Congress deliberately defunded. In a recent letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, revived a standing request to the Department of Justice for a list of all settlement agreements reached during the previous administration that involved alleged payments to partisan community organizations. He gave the agency until June 28 to respond to his request. Specifically, Grassley asked...

Other contributors to the deal include Stearns Lending, American Pacific Mortgage and Cornerstone Home Lending.

If there’s a TRID error, secondary market investors will not buy the loan or will pay less for it…

Counterparty risk appears to be on the mind of the FHFA…

There will likely be more buyback demands on the 2015 book of business in the future, but the total may not ever get to even 0.1 percent of issuance.

Deal agent compensation likely would include additional fees for less common, more intensive work…

The Treasury Department said the so-called GSE patch gives Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac an unfair advantage in the mortgage market, and it recommended eliminating this exception to the qualified-mortgage rule. In a financial regulations report released this week, the Treasury detailed a host of executive actions and regulatory changes that it believes can immediately stimulate economic growth, increase capital access and protect taxpayers. Adjusting and clarifying the ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage rule and phasing out the GSE patch are among those changes listed. The GSE patch, created under Dodd-Frank, allows GSE eligible loans to qualify for QM status, even if the DTI exceeds the standard 43 percent ratio.

Ginnie Mae hit a milestone in the MBS market during the first quarter of 2017, edging past Freddie Mac to become the second-largest supplier of single-family MBS in the world. A new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals $1.705 trillion of Ginnie 1-4 family MBS outstanding at the end of March, a 2.2 percent increase in just three months. Meanwhile, outstanding single-family Freddie MBS rose 0.7 percent to $1.703 trillion. Both Ginnie and Freddie accounted...[Includes two data tables]

This week, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee provided a bit more information on the process it plans to follow in shrinking the size of its massive balance sheet, once it decides the time is right to finally begin. “Provided that the economy evolves broadly as the committee anticipates, we currently expect to begin implementing a balance sheet normalization program this year,” Fed Chair Janet Yellen said in her post-meeting press conference. The hope is to initiate an incremental and largely predictable decline in the U.S. central bank’s securities holdings. The FOMC intends...

The Trump administration wants to pare back regulations that inhibit the non-agency MBS and ABS market and tilt current securitization economics that favor the government-sponsored enterprises over private issuers. “In order to revitalize a responsible [private-label securities] market, it is important to improve incentives for issuers through reasonable reductions in costs and regulatory burdens,” the Treasury Department said in a new report released this week. In particular, it aimed at adjusting relative economics for the government-sponsored enterprises and FHA/VA mortgage programs. On the regulatory side, Treasury recommends...