Although overall MBS volume was down, lenders delivered a healthy $115.16 billion of purchase-money mortgages to the GSEs during the third quarter.

The new remedies framework includes more transparency about the factors a GSE will weigh in determining whether a defect is significant.

Fear and loathing over marketing service agreements heats up. Kickbacks?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw a modest decline in the flow of home loans into their mortgage-backed securities programs during the third quarter of 2015, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside Mortgage Finance. The two government-sponsored enterprises issued a total of $223.47 billion of single-family MBS during the third quarter, a 3.8 percent decline from the previous quarter. Freddie had a slightly larger downturn (4.1 percent) than Fannie (3.6 percent). Although overall MBS volume was down, lenders delivered...[Includes three data tables]

The nation’s seven active mortgage insurance firms expect to be fully compliant with the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s new capital eligibility rules by the yearend deadline – if they aren’t already – but now there’s a new worry: more regulations may be on the way. According to sources inside the MI sector, the FHFA is taking a close look at the use of reinsurance by private mortgage insurers with an eye toward capping it. “FHFA is worried that reinsurance firms may not pay,” said one MI official who spoke extensively on the topic under the condition he and his firm not be identified. “They want to reduce the credit you get for using reinsurance firms.” “The FHFA is trying...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this week announced a new “origination defects and remedies framework” designed to give lenders more clarity about underwriting problems that could lead to a repurchase demand. The framework sets three categories of loan defect: findings, price-adjusted loans and significant defects. Findings are negligible defects that had no effect on whether the loan was acceptable to the government-sponsored enterprise. The GSE will not require a price adjustment or other remedy from the lender, though it may request updated data regarding the loan. Price-adjusted loans are...

While there may be some dispute in the industry regarding front-end versus back-end transactions, it’s clear that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac credit-risk transfer programs are here to stay and will only intensify, according to Bob Ryan, the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s acting deputy director of the division of conservatorship. “The FHFA and the enterprises are committed to credit risk on a routine basis. It is not a pilot; it’s a routine part of our ongoing activity,” he said during a Bipartisan Policy Center seminar on mortgage finance reform. Ryan re-emphasized...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has skimped in its oversight of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s budgets, in most cases not approving them until well after the start of the government-sponsored enterprises’ fiscal years, according to the Inspector General of the FHFA. The FHFA’s budget review and approval process for Fannie and Freddie is seriously flawed and plagued with cursory-level analysis and inadequate resources, the IG said. The agency generally agreed with the IG report and overhauled its budget-review process in July 2015. The IG noted...

Roughly 45 percent of FHA-insured, first-lien purchase mortgages had annual percentage rates in excess of the reporting threshold...

It appears that lenders were encouraging their loan officers to get applications in before the Oct. 3 implementation of the new RESPA-TILA integrated disclosure rule.