GOP senators recently dispatched a letter to FHFA Director Mel Watt, countering a plea signed by 33 Democrats in January calling on the agency director to immediately authorize GSE funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund.

In addition to its advisor role, Steadfast will purchase a participation in each MSR loan made by Customers Bank.

All of the loans in the Credit Suisse MBS are 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, 4.1 percent of which have 10-year interest-only periods.

When survey participants were asked to what extent the QM rule would affect their business, the most frequent responses were 10.1 percent to 20 percent and 90.1 percent to 100 percent, each of which snagged 20 percent shares of the responses.

Adam Levitin, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, is critical of efforts to align the QRM rule with the QM. “Skin in the game is meant to be a systemic stability regulation, but it has instead been pegged to a consumer protection regulation,” he said.

In a rambling, 6-page letter sent to the GSE’s board, Fairholme Managing Member Bruce Berkowitz claims Fannie Mae’s equity securities are now valued by the market at $36 billion.

The preliminary findings are not pretty: 55 percent of lender/servicers lost money in 4Q compared to just 4 percent for the first nine months of 2013.

The year’s top five FHA lenders – Wells Fargo, Quicken Loans, JPMorgan Chase, Freedom Mortgage and Bank of America – combined for 21.9 percent, or $46.0 billion, of total agency production, down 34.6 percent quarter over quarter.

HomeStreet might participate in or sponsor non-agency MBS going forward.

In an interview with IMFnews, Habib confirmed his resignation, but declined to say anything further about the company’s future.