As refinance business declines, the government-sponsored enterprises are stepping up efforts to help lenders produce more volume in other areas. At the California Mortgage Bankers Association’s secondary market conference this week in San Francisco, officials from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac touted various efforts to help lenders and ultimately prop up GSE MBS issuance.

Slightly over half were deals backed by newly originated mortgages…

Don Brown of Optimal Blue: The industry is “at or near a high-water mark” in terms of the number of mortgage investors.

Rick Sharga of Carrington: “Refi volumes will continue to contract, and lenders will have to accelerate their shift towards more purchase business in order to maintain volume.”

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae saw a somewhat sedated increase in single-family mortgage-backed security issuance during the second quarter. The trends closely tracked forecasts. Agency purchase-mortgage business was up a solid 24.5 percent from the first quarter, boosting the 2018 market slightly ahead of where it was at the midway point last year. And refinance activity continued to tumble, dropping 21.3 percent from the first quarter to just ... [Includes two data charts]

The sale of bulk mortgage servicing portfolios stayed red hot in the second quarter, with buyer interest and prices remaining high, but a modest lull in activity may be on the way, according to interviews conducted this week by Inside Mortgage Trends. Servicing brokers polled by this newsletter said there’s roughly $28 billion worth of receivables currently in the market that are ready to change hands. This includes a roughly $10 billion package of servicing rights that has been ...

With mortgage production costs exceptionally high, a number of lenders are outsourcing certain functions. Christopher George, president and CEO of CMG Financial, said the lender moved some operations offshore via outsourcing. “There are some areas where we can do business substantially cheaper and not compromise quality,” he said this week at the California Mortgage Bankers Association’s secondary market conference. George said two years ago, CMG had 161 ...

The reasons that the homeownership rate among millennials hasn’t been as high as it was for previous generations continues to captivate industry analysts. The latest research suggests that those born in the early 1980s through the early 2000s have delayed homeownership due to personal decisions and because home prices are rising faster than income. Nearly 60.0 percent of renters are looking to buy in the next five years and 70.0 percent of those renters are millennials ...

CoreLogic is touting a new on-demand service that makes residential condominium lending a less strenuous process for lenders even as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac warm up the market with policy changes to drum up new business. The new service, CondoSafe Express, simplifies condo lending by taking over the extra layer of work lenders must perform to originate a condo loan. “Lenders not only have to get a borrower’s credit report, verify income and ... [Includes one data chart]

California remained the biggest market in the U.S. for primary mortgage insurance during the second quarter, but other states had higher proportions of insured loans, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of agency loan-level data. In Florida, Virginia and Georgia, more than 60 percent of agency loans carried some form of primary mortgage insurance ... [Includes one data chart]