The private-equity firm Blackstone Group LP has spent $7.5 billion snapping up 40,000 distressed homes over the last two years to assemble the largest single-family rental business in the U.S. With the help of Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse, it could begin moving forward any day now with the sale of almost $500 million in bonds backed by lease payments from those properties, the first such real estate owned to rental securitization transaction ever put together. The firms have been fairly tight-lipped about the deal, which has been in the works for months, but tidbits have been leaking out in dribs and drabs. According to media reports, the deal will be backed...

Legislative sources say the partial government shutdown did not significantly impede the Senate Banking Committee’s work toward finding a solution to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The refrain from bank management was virtually unanimous: mortgage production dropped significantly and gain-on-sale margins narrowed. Although mortgage servicing right values continued to climb, that doesn’t always translate into improved earnings on that side of the business.

Is Ed DeMarco unimpressed with Fannie and Freddie's return to profitability? “…we should keep the recent reports of positive net income in perspective,” he told the audience of the Bipartisan Policy Center this week. “Much of it has been related to one-time adjustments..."

Although Fannie Mae has been pushing certain thinly capitalized nonbanks to its cash window for loan sales, it also wants to know why others that have the capital – and approvals – aren’t issuing mortgage-backed securities. A Fannie spokesman had this to say on the matter: “If not, why not? Maybe it’s time for us to have a conversation with them.”

Building on both GSEs’ recent risk-sharing transactions to achieve the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s $30 billion 2013 Conservatorship Scorecard target, the head of the FHFA said this week to expect more of the same as well as additional risk-sharing innovations. In a speech at the Bipartisan Policy Center, FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in concert with the Finance Agency, are “planning for the scope and depth of risk-sharing transactions to continue and expand.”

Roughly 4,100 people have registered to attend the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association, which launches Sunday night in Power City USA.

California was the biggest source of private MI loans for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the state doesn’t dominate the GSE insured market the way it does in other measures.

U.S. prosecutors estimate that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost almost $850 million (gross) from Countrywide's "Hustle" program. However, at the time, BofA didn't even own CFC.