As the share of investors purchasing homes declines, mortgage financing continues to take market share from cash financing for home purchases, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. Non-cash financing was used on 72.4 percent of home purchases in November, based on a three-month moving average. That’s up from a 70.7 percent share in November 2013 and a share as low as 66.9 percent in March 2012. Prior to the housing crisis, the non-cash share of total home sales averaged...

President Obama this week signed a comprehensive package of spending bills, providing funding to federal agencies through fiscal 2015 but missing two initiatives that would have toughened FHA enforcement and benefited new homeowners through enhanced housing counseling. The FY 2015 Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act is comprised of 11 funding bills for all federal agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The bill provides...

Advocates for GSE reform looking for savings in the federal budget will be disappointed...

More than half of Fannie’s MBS flow in November came from refinance loans, the first time since March that purchase mortgages accounted for less than half of its business.

As of September 30, banks and thrifts held $15.50 billion in repurchase reserves, most of it tied to Fannie/Freddie loans.

Ocwen also did not disclose what it paid to acquire the nonperforming loans or who the buyer was.

Bank and thrift MSR holdings peaked at $5.977 trillion back at the end of 2009.

Roughly 86 percent of the mortgages were correspondent originations.

Moreover, CMLA wants lower guaranty fees for seller/servicers...

Naysayers have been predicting the demise of publicly traded mortgage real estate investment trusts for two years now and have been consistently disappointed. It’s hard to say whether things will be different this time around. According to figures compiled by Inside MBS & ABS, it appears that most REITs have been intentionally reducing their MBS holdings over the past several quarters, preparing for the day when bond prices finally fall. At Sept. 30, 16 publicly traded REITs held...[Includes one data chart]