The mortgage securitization rate jumped significantly higher during the third quarter of 2016, spurred by a bigger market share for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A total of $416.5 billion of relatively newly-originated mortgages were included in single-family MBS issued during the third quarter, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. That figure, which excludes modified loans and most mortgages aged more than three months, represented 71.2 percent of the $585.0 billion of first-lien mortgages originated during the period. During the second quarter, the securitization rate was...[Includes one data table]

Bank of America once again ranked first as the top home-equity lender in the nation, although its production fell 17.7 percent…

The FHFA’s mention of servicing liquidity is an acknowledgement of the growing market share gains by nonbanks.

Legislation introduced in the last weeks of the 114th Congress would push Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac deeper into the risk-sharing pool, including forcing them into a front-end structure they have so far resisted. The “Taxpayer Protections and Market Access for Mortgage Finance Act of 2016” would require the Federal Housing Finance Agency to push the two government-sponsored enterprises to transfer at least 400 basis points of their total risk. While it’s not clear how the legislation intends this to be measured, it appears...

Investors are snatching up shares of publicly traded MI firms...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will launch pilot programs to purchase personal loans tied to manufactured housing under the final duty-to-serve regulation released this week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The duty-to-serve requirement was mandated by Congress eight years ago but has never been implemented. The government-sponsored enterprises will devise three-year plans for serving low- and moderate income households in three underserved areas: manufactured housing, affordable housing preservation and rural housing. Like the annual affordable housing goals set for the GSEs, the duty-to-serve requirement does not include...

In other instances, the home price agreed upon by the buyer and seller might fall within market trends, but the appraiser might not have access to data to verify the value.

Some good news: the FHFA did not mention servicing compensation in the new "Scorecard."

Chase, which often has wide swings in its monthly GSE activity, increased its Freddie issuance by 46.1 percent from October to November, while reducing its Fannie activity by 2.5 percent.

Some industry executives believe the recent spike in interest rates could prove temporary.