Effective July 1, reporting of tax information to investors of Ginnie Mae securities will move from e-Access to the Ginnie Mae Enterprise-Wide Portal (GMEP), which now serves as the single access point for all of the agency's online business applications. The e-Access function for uploading quarterly widely held fixed investment trust (WHFIT) reporting files for investors would no longer ...

Government housing policy and agencies played a much larger role in the housing crisis than initially believed, but a fresh look at the conclusions of two GSE critics has prompted a top JPMorgan Chase analyst to take the unusual step of issuing a public retraction.

Faced with a declining originations outlook, mortgage lenders should take advantage of today's more plentiful warehouse lending environment to review strategies that were developed during the liquidity crisis, industry experts say. The warehouse capacity issue has swung 180 degrees from where it was a few years ago, said Elaine Batlis, a senior vice president at Silvergate Bank, during last week's national secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Back in 2006-07, there was an oasis of liquidity; pricing was good and terms were flexible, Batlis said. But in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008, there was a sudden...

Although the new repurchase claims submitted by investors to mortgage lenders appeared to ease in the first quarter of 2011, the industry continues to carry a growing inventory of unresolved buyback demands. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported that lender repurchases or indemnifications totaled $2.8 billion during the first quarter of 2011. That was down from $5.9 billion in the previous quarter, a figure that was swollen by Bank of America's large-scale settlement of buyback demands from both government-sponsored enterprises. In fact, the volume of GSE repurchases during the first three months of 2011 was the lowest quarterly volume since... [Includes one graph and one data chart]

In a business dominated by a handful of super-sized national lenders and production volume in a nosedive, lenders have to pay more attention to how they compete for the dwindling pool of potential borrowers. Spending more time on acquiring industry knowledge and reaching out to customers will pump up originators' performance, according to a recent report released by Mortgage Source Success, a client acquisition and retention solution provider. "In less than a decade, mortgage loan origination in the U.S. has been turned on its head," the report said. "Not only has the economic crisis severely reduced the number and dollar-volume of originations, but...

Look for refinance activity to continue to decline throughout the year, experts warn, but only a small percentage of those homeowners who do take a seat at the closing table will be "cash-out" borrowers. Freddie Mac reported last week that during the first quarter of 2011, only 25 percent of those who refinanced their existing mortgage loans pulled cash out of their home. Among refi loans, the average cash-out share - which Freddie defines as when the loan balance is increased by at least 5 percent - over the past 25 years was 62 percent. Even more surprising, Freddie noted that a record 21 percent of refi borrowers actually reduced their principal balance by...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported sharply different earnings results for the first quarter, but at least one thing was mostly the same: both government-sponsored enterprises continued to push a significant volume of loans back to lenders through repurchase demands while carrying a large inventory of unresolved buybacks. “Some of our seller/servicers have failed to fully perform their repurchase obligations due to a lack of financial obligations in a timely manner,” Freddie said in its first quarter 2011 earnings report. As of March 31, 2011, the unpaid balance of loans subject to...

The so-called RMBS 2.0 features squeaky-clean collateral and high-definition transparency, but industry experts say, more importantly, that after years of mostly talk there is now some momentum in the market. Adam Yarnold, a managing director at Barclays Capital, said there are half a dozen residential mortgage conduits – including his firm – that are buying loans. During a panel session at the secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association, he noted that more broker/dealers are in the wings. Barclays is buying high-quality loans with loan-to-value ratios below 70 percent and debt-to-income ratios that come close to the standards proposed by federal regulators for qualified residential mortgages, Yarnold said. The company hosts a web-based portal through which it locks loans and...

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly looking into the securitization and put-back practices of Credit Suisse and JPMorgan Chase in connection with alleged recoveries from defective mortgages repurchased by originators from securitization trusts. Credit Suisse confirmed to Inside MBS & ABS a disclosure made by bond insurer MBIA Insurance Corp. that the Zurich-based bank had received a subpoena from the SEC seeking data on repurchases of certain defective loans. The disclosure was made in a lawsuit against three Credit Suisse units – Credit Suisse Securities, DLJ Mortgage Capital, Inc. and Select Portfolio Servicing – which MBIA filed with the New York State Supreme Court on April 29. The suit seeks to compel Credit Suisse to turn over data which MBIA believes would bolster its fraud and breach-of-contract claims against...

Some investors are ready to resume participation in the non-agency market while most others will take a wait-and-see approach, based on comments made at the secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association this week in New York City. Steve O’Connor, senior vice president of public policy and...