Marking several milestones, including the first time that Freddie Mac has issued both a Structured Agency Credit Risk offering and Agency Credit Insurance Structure in the same month, the GSE announced last week that it will sell more than $590 million in STACR 2015-HQA2. This is its last STACR offering for the year and it obtained its largest Agency Credit Insurance Structure so far, for a combined $702.4 million limit. The two are related. Through Freddie’s ACIS program, the GSE buys insurance policies that transfer a portion of the credit risk associated with its STACR debt note reference pools from insurance and reinsurance companies around the world.

Fannie Mae said that in the midst of trying to reach first-time homebuyers, a new trend has emerged with existing homeowners struggling to become repeat, move-up buyers.There was a 40 percent decrease in repeat buyers from 2002 to 2014, according to recent commentary from Jude Landis, vice president, single-family credit policy at Fannie. Credit did not appear to be holding them back either, because even among homeowners with mid-tier credit scores, between 680 and 740, the number of repeat home purchases dropped dramatically. “Owners of their first homes may have the credit eligibility to move up, but low housing equity appear to be holding them back,” she said.

Although the Federal Housing Finance Agency said that Freddie Mac failed to meet all of its goals for low-income homebuyers in 2014, the GSE apparently has put the wheels in motion to meet its target for 2015. But Sen. Bob Menendez, D-NJ, ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development, wrote the FHFA asking why the goals fell by the wayside.Don Layton, Freddie’s CEO, told Inside The GSEs that the GSE has been working since early in the year to make sure those goals are met. Those preparations included the hiring of Danny Gardner in March, who leads a new unit specializing in affordable housing.

  FHFA Debuts FHFA Insights Blog. This week the Federal Finance Housing Agency launched a new blog titled FHFA Insights. The blog, located on the agency’s website, is designed to serve as a resource for a wide range of stakeholders, including homeowners, renters, policy makers, media and the general public. The FHFA’s most recent blog entry this week focuses on the expansion of the Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative which went into effect Dec. 1. …

At the same time, credit standards – at least in the agency market – have eased only slightly over the past two years...

Although most of the heavy lifting in writing new rules for the mortgage industry has passed, federal regulators still have some significant projects in the works, according to recently released semiannual regulatory agendas. The Federal Housing Finance Agency expects to release a proposed “duty-to-serve” regulation for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the end of this year. The rulemaking was mandated by the 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act but hasn’t gotten much attention since the agency published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking back in August 2009. The FHFA is...

Among the top five jumbo lenders, only Chase was able to increase its production between the second quarter and the third quarter.

UWM may soon surpass Stearns Lending to become the largest wholesale-broker lender in the nation...

G-fees were tapped in a recent highway transportation bill, but eventually the language was stripped from the measure…

ARM activity continues to be low at just 6.1 percent of new applications.