The Federal Housing Finance Agency late last week directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop charging the 25 basis point “adverse market” fee assessed on all loans since the financial crises, but most lower-risk loans won’t get any reduction in loan-level pricing adjustments. As expected, the FHFA did not make any changes to the “base” guaranty fees charged by the two government-sponsored enterprises. Current fees, on average, are at an “appropriate” level. “We are going to monitor this on an ongoing or quarterly basis and we’ll adjust based on market conditions,” said Sandra Thompson, FHFA’s deputy director. The regulator instructed...

The agency mortgage servicing market grew modestly during the first quarter of 2015, thanks to Ginnie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of agency mortgage-backed securities disclosures. Lenders serviced a total of $5.287 trillion of single-family mortgages pooled in outstanding agency MBS as of the end of March, up 0.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2014. The figures do not include unsecuritized loans guaranteed by the two government-sponsored enterprises or, in the case of Ginnie, FHA-insured reverse mortgages. And the numbers don’t perfectly synch up with aggregated reports by the agencies of their guaranteed mortgage debt outstanding. All three of the top agency MBS servicers had...[Includes two data charts]

An anonymous group of veteran players in the mini-correspondent channel is pushing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to update the guidance it issued for the sector last year. The investor group, which purchased more than $8 billion in loans from mini-correspondents in 2014, offered alternative criteria it recommends the CFPB use instead when trying to determine if an entity has in fact made the transition from mortgage broker to correspondent lender. The CFPB issued...

Most of Sen. Grassley's inquiry focused on transparency and whether the president invoked executive privilege over some of the documents pertaining to the third amendment to the PSPAs...

The top contributor to the new Credit Suisse jumbo deal is New Penn, which is controlled by MBS co-inventor Lew Ranieri.

Qualified buyers have until June 2 to bid on the Miami-based loans.

Some 97 lenders contributed to the pending security from Redwood, led by PrimeLending with a 9.0 percent share.

On IMA’s other deal, the brokerage firm is offering $100 million per month of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac “flow” product.

Is Blackstone's purchase of a mortgage lender a "one-off" deal or will other Street firms follow suit?

The Federal Reserve is seen as taking the brunt of nonbank servicer-induced prepayment risk on agency MBS.