Mortgage industry executives should be aware and expect continued – and perhaps even more muscular – use of a 1989 federal law by government prosecutors to pursue mortgage-related claims. At the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice embraced the use of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) in MBS lawsuits. Despite Holder’s announcement late last month that he is stepping down after six years as AG, there is...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was critical this week of aspects of the student loan securitization process as well as servicer performance as it issued its latest annual report on private student-loan borrowing. The report analyzed more than 5,300 private student loan complaints between Oct. 1, 2013, and Sept. 30, 2014, an increase of 38 percent over the previous year. “Lending practices in the private student-loan market in the years preceding the financial crisis shared...

Investors have bid up the value of MBS the past two weeks, with agency product hitting new 52-week highs. This development benefits investors as long as interest rates don’t fall dramatically enough to spark prepayment concerns. In particular, analysts are paying close attention to publicly traded mortgage real estate investment trusts that hold agency MBS. According to figures compiled by Inside MBS & ABS, REITs held $286.3 billion of MBS at the end of June after increasing their holdings by 9.7 percent during the second quarter. Now, those bets are paying off...

The substantial increase in federal support of the single-family housing finance system, as well as weaknesses uncovered in the wake of the mortgage market meltdown, have led to a U.S. finance system that warrants reform, according to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO focused considerable attention on the much-reported fact that government programs have accounted for a huge share of the mortgage and MBS market since the financial crisis. The congressional watchdog views the federal role in housing finance as a “high-risk area.” “Developments in mortgage markets since 2000 have challenged...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s proposed single security for the GSEs met with conflicting views as the comment period ended this week. In August, the FHFA proposed a single-security structure to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to issue a common MBS to serve the single-family market. The proposal is aimed at eliminating Freddie’s pricing disadvantage and improving liquidity in the to-be-announced market.

In fact, nearly a fifth of the repurchases involved loans sold to the GSEs by Lehman Brothers or its related mortgage businesses.

Zandi and deRitis believe that the FHA is on track to be able to lower its mortgage insurance premiums by 50 basis points to an average of 120 basis points for total upfront and annual premiums.

According to one analyst, "Ackman is reloading the boat with the extra cash he has on hand. Hopefully, others will join him.”

More trouble for Walter Investment Management? Meanwhile, according to NTC, as many as 490,000 homeowners could be affected by faulty servicer database records.

Mortgage lenders continued to work through a huge pile of repurchase demands related to loans securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the housing market crash. The two government-sponsored enterprises reported a total of $1.269 billion of repurchases by sellers during the second quarter of 2014, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter, of Securities and Exchange Commission filings by the two GSEs. That compared to just $522.5 million in repurchases during the first quarter of this year. As has been the case since the buyback issue mushroomed several years ago, most of the second-quarter repurchases focused...[Includes one data chart]