The Prestwick Group and MIAC are also working on servicing deals.

Regarding Altisource Portfolio Solutions, Sterne Agee noted: “It is difficult to be optimistic from here"...

An unspecified number of counties would have been assigned lower loan limits, based on house price trends, but the FHFA weighed “other factors” and left them unchanged.

A sale of that size would greatly reduce the bank’s portfolio and would signal a strategy shift.

The biggest gain in bank MBS investment during the third quarter was in non-agency securities.

The increase in g-fees last year made all three loan-purpose categories more profitable.

Banks and thrifts held a combined $1.535 trillion of residential MBS at the end of September, a modest 0.6 percent increase from the previous quarter, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis of bank call reports. Bank MBS holdings had spiked higher in the first quarter of this year, only to fall back in the following period. Compared to a year ago, the industry’s aggregate MBS portfolio was up 1.4 percent. Bank and thrift MBS holdings first crossed...[Includes two data charts]

Top mortgage finance professionals and government officials gathered in New York City last week to discuss the prospects for the non-agency MBS market, and their assessments were all over the board, a sign of the uncertainty many participants have about trying to resuscitate a stagnant sector. “It’s been seven years since the financial crisis, and certainly a lot of things have changed,” said Rui Pereira, managing director at Fitch Ratings, during a panel at the non-agency MBS reform symposium sponsored by the Structured Finance Industry Group and Information Management Network. He then cited...

Average MBS guaranty fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac jumped from 36 basis points in 2012 to 51 bps last year, according to an annual study by the Federal Housing Finance Agency that was released late this week. But the impact of the fee hikes was not spread uniformly across the government-sponsored enterprises’ business. The report shows that the estimated average g-fee on purchase mortgages climbed from 40 bps in 2012 to 55 bps last year. The average fee for refinances rose slightly less, by 14 bps, for both rate-term deals (48 bps in 2013) and cash-out refinances (53 bps last year). According to the FHFA study sample, the purchase business rose...

The head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency told Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee members this week that a decision on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guaranty fees will come soon after the New Year. In his first oversight hearing since taking the reins of the agency in January, FHFA Director Mel Watt stated during questioning that the regulator of the government-sponsored enterprises will make its move on g-fees during the first quarter of 2015. In one of his first acts as FHFA director, Watt postponed...