The set of changes was updated in the GSE’s selling guide and shows a new way that income from self-employment can be both calculated and documented.

Activity in the Home Affordable Refinance Program in the second quarter of 2015 was down 0.3 percent from the first three months of the year, according to new loan-count figures released by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Fannie Mae had a slight increase in HARP activity and accounted for 59.3 percent of the total for the two government-sponsored enterprises. …

As one jumbo securitization officialtold Inside MBS & ABS: “Gain-on-sale margins have been okay, but no one is buying a new boat.”

The heavyweight Wall Street group that sets the to-be-announced MBS standard is pushing federal regulators to take aggressive steps to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac programs aligned as much as possible as the government-sponsored enterprises develop a new single security. In a sternly written letter to the GSE regulator, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association warned that the TBA market could be disrupted if Fannie and Freddie policies diverge too much under the new system in which the GSEs would issue fully-fungible securities. “If performance and credit risk are not aligned, then the securities will not be fungible and the market will not trade them as if they are,” the group said. SIFMA argues...

Freddie Mac’s Structured Agency Credit Risk deals and Fannie Mae’s Connecticut Avenue Security transactions have accounted for about 90 percent of risk transfers by the two government-sponsored enterprises. But the Federal Housing Finance Agency is pushing the GSEs to test new structures. FHFA said in a recent report that its longer term goal for the STACR and CAS products is for the GSEs to transition from debt issuance to credit-linked notes. That structure would be similar to enterprise debt issuances, but a trust would issue the note instead of the GSE. Principal and interest payments on the STACR and CAS debt issuances are...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last month saw sharp percent declines in new issuance of single-family mortgage-backed securities, and they are capturing less of the conventional-conforming market.The two GSEs generated $65.94 billion in single-family MBS in August, down 20.8 percent from July, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. Monthly volume has seesawed through most of 2015, driven in part by how much seasoned-loan business they get. Most of the August decline in new issuance stemmed from a sharp drop in Freddie’s vintage-loan activity. After securitizing $8.00 billion of loans aged more than three months in July – most of them delivered by Bank of America – Freddie securitized just $99.6 million of such loans in August.

In the years after the financial crisis, lenders have tried to limit the amount of repurchase demands from the government-sponsored enterprises by tightening underwriting requirements, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. The HFPC noted that the percentage of mortgages that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have put back to lenders due to violations of representations and warranties for originations in recent years ...

Fannie Mae launched the Home Purchase Sentiment Index this week to give monthly updates on the direction of the housing market from a consumers point of view. Results showed that attitudes toward the current home-selling climate have dipped back to their April 2015 level thanks to recent rising mortgage rates and economic concerns, according to Doug Duncan, Fannie’s chief economist.The index will be released on or around the seventh day of each month. The HPSI takes results from Fannie’s consumer-focused National Housing Survey to measure current attitudes toward the housing market. This index is different from other consumer economic sentiment indices because it’s devoted exclusively to housing. Fannie said it will help industry players make better informed business decisions. The GSE constructed...

As they approach their eighth year in conservatorship, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac generate a lot of revenue for the government and dominate the conventional-conforming mortgage market. But both GSEs are forced to hold less and less capital, and a bad quarter or two could force another round of bailouts. Aside from lawsuits by disgruntled GSE shareholders, pressure appears to be growing for a new approach that would allow the two to rebuild their capital. According to reports, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-SC, may introduce such a bill in one of the least hospitable places it could land, the House Financial Services Committee.