The inability of Fannie and Freddie to build capital is a huge issue, Stevens said.

In the new “Mortgage Professional’s Handbook,” residential finance technology expert Jeff Lebowitz predicts the industry “is about to exit its Victorian era of technology use."

Eric Kaplan of Ranieri Strategies noted that many investors in non-agency MBS wish to remain anonymous.

Ocwen's goal: to be a “world-class” company. But investors need convincing. Its stock is down 92 percent from its all-time high.

If refinancings accelerate, Wells Fargo will need to step up production to protect its massive servicing portfolio...

Any of these regulations might be a concern in isolation, said Johns, but the cumulative effect will damage the U.S. economy and more…

“This was really gnarly and political,” said Redwood executive Marty Hughes. “I think the FHFA making this decision was just something that they wanted to get behind them.”

A handful of recent and current U.S., European and international regulatory efforts “pose a serious threat to securitization as a critical source of funding for the real economy,” especially when taken together, a top securitization official told lawmakers in Washington, DC, this week. Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, Richard Johns, executive director of the Structured Finance Industry Group, took on a handful of the industry’s most problematic regulatory initiatives. Among them were the liquidity ratio rules that U.S. regulators implemented in late 2014, and the new Basel III capital rules that were adopted by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. He also addressed...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to trim their retained investment portfolios in late 2015 with most of the focus on shrinking their non-agency MBS and holdings of their own securities. Freddie Mac’s retained mortgage portfolio declined 15.1 percent last year, ending at $346.91 billion, safely below the $359.3 billion cap set by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The government-sponsored enterprise reduced its non-agency MBS holdings by $25.60 billion, or 38.8 percent, from its yearend 2014 level. While that included hefty declines in both subprime and Alt A MBS, the biggest decline, 41.3 percent, was...[Includes one data table]

Fannie Mae has been actively buying delinquent mortgages out of MBS trusts and plans to eventually issue securities collateralized by the loans, said Timothy Mayopoulos, CEO of the government-sponsored enterprise. During a recent earnings call and question-and-answer period with the press, the CEO noted that the GSE has bought a “substantial” number of mortgages out of trusts with the goal of making them performing again. “Over the next year or two,” Fannie will...