Company Chief Executive Michael Lau noted that Pingora is taking in roughly $2.5 billion a month through “flow” arrangements.

The score card was the brainchild of former Acting FHFA director Edward DeMarco, who is retiring from the agency at the end of April.

As for details, a spokesman for the company said Ellie isn’t talking about the topic at this time. In an email exchange with IMFnews, mortgage technology consultant Tony Garritano of Progress in Lending called the whole episode “very bizarre”…

The conditional prepayment rate for prime jumbo, Alt-A and subprime loans dropped to 14.7 percent, 10.3 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively, in the first quarter of 2014, according to the ratings service.

However, a new research report from Sterne Agee notes: “We see the DFS as the primary log jam on the servicing transfer front.”

The FHFA shortly will begin to collect additional, more specific and personal information on borrowers and loans as part of the National Mortgage Database project the agency launched with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The total past-due rate on mortgages has declined in almost every quarter since the second quarter of 2011, helped by increasing home prices. However, not all vintages are performing in-step, as delinquencies are starting to increase on loans originated in 2004 and before.

The sputtering non-agency MBS market generated just $2.59 billion in new issuance during the first three months of 2014, one of the lowest quarterly marks since the market imploded in late 2007. New issuance in the first quarter was down 44.1 percent from the already-weak level in the fourth quarter of 2013, and it was off 65.6 percent from the same period a year ago. There was...[Includes two data charts]

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs held more than 10 hearings last year in advance of the housing-finance reform bill introduced in March by Sens. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Mike Crapo, R-ID. However, the bill appears to be far from perfect, as industry participants are angling to make suggestions for changes as the committee plans a markup at the end of this month. Perhaps the biggest outstanding issue with S.1217 is that even though the Johnson-Crapo bill calls for the preservation of the to-be-announced market, the capital-markets execution contemplated under the new housing-finance system might not be compatible with TBA transactions. The Johnson-Crapo version of S. 1217 doesn’t have...

Issuance of residential MBS from foreign countries aimed at investors in the U.S. dwindled in 2013 after a few years when it surpassed new issuance of domestic jumbo deals. Activity in the market for U.S. dollar-denominated foreign MBS has picked up somewhat this year due to issuance out of Australia. Some $1.63 billion in U.S. dollar-denominated foreign residential MBS was issued in 2013, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a significant decline from the $10.70 billion in such issuance in 2012. The market for foreign residential MBS aimed at U.S. investors has been strong since the end of 2009, with $21.10 billion in such issuance in 2010 and $32.68 billion in issuance in 2011. After the financial crisis, issuance of U.S. dollar-denominated foreign MBS outpaced...