The non-agency MBS market had arguably its best quarter since the financial crisis during the April-May production cycle, generating $20.72 billion of new securities, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. [Includes three data charts.]

Mortgage originations have been trending lower but there’s still plenty of demand in the secondary market for new production, according to industry participants. There’s demand from both MBS investors and aggregators that package mortgages for securitization.

As refinance business declines, the government-sponsored enterprises are stepping up efforts to help lenders produce more volume in other areas. At the California Mortgage Bankers Association’s secondary market conference this week in San Francisco, officials from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac touted various efforts to help lenders and ultimately prop up GSE MBS issuance.

As the term of Federal Housing Finance Agency Mel Watt winds down, the mortgage industry is getting more vocal about perceived shortcomings in the oversight of the government-sponsored enterprises, including the blurring of lines between the primary and secondary markets.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s structure was deemed unconstitutional this week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. And in another rejection for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders, the court ruled the Treasury net worth sweep was within the agency’s power.

Slightly over half were deals backed by newly originated mortgages…

Don Brown of Optimal Blue: The industry is “at or near a high-water mark” in terms of the number of mortgage investors.

While the GSEs have been engaging in risk-based pricing for mortgage guarantees since the crisis, very large cross subsidies remain, according to one panelist from the Federal Reserve…

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae saw a somewhat sedated increase in single-family mortgage-backed security issuance during the second quarter. The trends closely tracked forecasts. Agency purchase-mortgage business was up a solid 24.5 percent from the first quarter, boosting the 2018 market slightly ahead of where it was at the midway point last year. And refinance activity continued to tumble, dropping 21.3 percent from the first quarter to just ... [Includes two data charts]

California remained the biggest market in the U.S. for primary mortgage insurance during the second quarter, but other states had higher proportions of insured loans, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of agency loan-level data. In Florida, Virginia and Georgia, more than 60 percent of agency loans carried some form of primary mortgage insurance ... [Includes one data chart]