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]

Noticeably absent from the letter: the FHLBs of Chicago and San Francisco…

Of course, there are some in the industry who will argue Fannie and Freddie are hardly zombie-like at all...

The judges opined: "Indeed, the GSEs lost more in 2008 ($108 billion) than they had earned in the previous thirty-seven years combined ($95 billion). Yet the GSEs remained solvent.”

Some Wall Street firms are now quietly extending repo lines to originators of non-QMs...

The court said Congress encased the regulator in layers of insulation, which limits the president’s power to remove and replace the FHFA director...

Capital Alpha said its choice to be the next FHFA director is Ed DeMarco, who held the job once before...

Prime jumbo mortgages continue to account for the majority of non-agency MBS issuance…