Ginnie Mae this week unveiled a position paper outlining its views and new strategies for its mortgage-backed securities program with greater emphasis on liquidity and on the preservation of servicing rights both as an activity and as an asset class. During a conference it sponsored this week, Ginnie announced a number of initiatives that would help the agency adapt its complex financial and operational structures to a post-crisis secondary mortgage market in which non-depository and smaller institutions are playing a bigger role. Ginnie underscored...

Efforts to reduce the government-sponsored enterprises’ footprint using guaranty fees and loan limits should be left to Congress, according to Bob Ryan, a special advisor to the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Meanwhile, officials at the Treasury Department suggest that the FHFA does have a role in setting policy that will inform any housing finance reform action by Congress. In comments this week at the ABS East conference produced by Information Management Network in Miami Beach, Ryan said the FHFA looks to Congress for direction when considering how to run the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “There is nothing in the legislation that suggests the FHFA should shrink the footprint [of the GSEs],” he said. Ryan said...

The supply of 1-4 family mortgage debt declined again in the second quarter of 2014 despite an uptick in whole loans held in bank, thrift and credit union portfolios, according to an Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. The Federal Reserve Board late last week reported $9.855 trillion in single-family mortgage debt outstanding at the end of June. That was down $4.9 billion from March – a scant 0.05 percent decline, but the second straight quarterly downturn. The increase in mortgage debt outstanding in the third quarter of 2013 increasingly looks like an aberration rather than a turning point. The most recent figure is...[Includes one data chart]

Just how large is the non-QM market? That’s hard to say...

DBRS isn't mincing any words: “Compared with other post-crisis representations and warranties frameworks, this transaction employs a relatively weak standard..."

Hell hath no fury like an agency whose new issuers are not actually issuing (MBS)...

FHFA's Bob Ryan said the GSE regulator has concerns that decreasing loan limits or increasing g-fees would limit access to credit.

As the mortgage M&A market chugs along in the coming year, Guild hopes to be a buyer.

The concept of MSR-backed securities recently came to the fore again with the news that Stonegate Mortgage, Indianapolis, is contemplating a transaction.

Broker originations also had a significantly larger average loan amount, $230,082, than the other channels.