Joe Farr, director of marketing for MBS Quoteline, said MBS prices have actually improved since the Federal Reserve’s decision to hike rates one week ago.

Over the past six quarters, selling Ginnie Mae servicing rights has been a difficult task with buyers turning their noses up at the product, preferring instead to stay within the safe confines of deals tied to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. According to investment bankers interviewed by Inside Mortgage Finance, the Ginnie market for mortgage servicing rights has been problematic for two main reasons: the fear of lawsuits and sanctions tied to FHA lending, and fast prepayment speeds tied to FHA and VA streamline refis. But now that rates have risen – and mostly stayed that way – there are...

Stop the presses: a consensus on GSE reform is here! Really?

Mortgage lenders continue to gain share in the home-purchase market as investors and other cash buyers have become less prevalent and the supply of distressed properties declines. Some 562,000 new homes were sold in 2016, according to the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mortgage financing was used for 95.0 percent of the sales, up from a 92.0 percent share the previous year. The cash share of new home sales hit...

A former Fannie executive said it was always his belief the GSE charter allowed for multifamily financing but the idea was to fund “vertical” homes and not “horizontal.”

BAML suggested that one of the reasons prepayment speeds on jumbos have been relatively slow is the presence of self-employed borrowers…

During the fourth quarter of 2016, lenders repurchased just $207.31 million of home loans, a 37.0 percent decline from the third quarter.

Esaki and White propose allowing issuers to choose any number of rating services to submit credit support levels for a particular MBS or ABS, paying a bid-preparation fee for each estimate.

S&P finished a close second with a 53.6 percent market share.

A proposal from a former high-ranking official at S&P Global Ratings to reduce incentives for rating shopping has been met with skepticism and resistance from officials at other rating services. Howard Esaki, the former global head of securitization research at S&P Global Ratings, and Lawrence White, a professor of economics, NYU Stern School of Business, recently published a proposal to reform the process for how rating services are selected to grade MBS and ABS. They said...