The biggest rate of decline was in home-equity securitizations, where there has been no new issuance for several years.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is making plans for how to increase the baseline conforming loan limit beyond $417,000 as home prices are close to recovering from the financial crisis. The FHFA last week announced that it will use the “expanded data” house price index that the agency has published since 2011 to make adjustments to the baseline conforming loan limit. A change to the baseline limit would also impact limits for high-cost areas, which are allowed to be ...

With little movement from Congress to reform the government-sponsored enterprises, some industry analysts have called on the Obama administration to re-capitalize the GSEs and end their conservatorships. While such an action appears unlikely, the move could help boost activity in the non-agency market. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were privatized, they would likely have to increase their capital from current levels and face increased borrowing costs. Interest rates ...

New entrants in the Ginnie Mae issuer community expand access to credit at lower cost, deepen the market for Ginnie mortgage servicing rights and help address the agency’s “too-big-to-fail” issue, said the agency’s top executive. “Our top concern is that issuers have the operational and financial strength to meet issuer/servicer obligations,” Tozer said during the recent secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The flood of new nonbank issuers into the program has been well documented. While they have diluted the heavy concentration of business in the hands of a few megabanks, many have complex financial structures that are less tested in the marketplace, he said. The pipeline of issuer applicants has dropped dramatically, the Ginnie executive reported. To get approved, an applicant has to show where the cash will come from to ...

Mortgage brokers facilitated an estimated $39.0 billion of home mortgages during the first three months of 2015...

The regulator said it plans to use its “expanded data” house price index to determine adjustments for conforming loan limits.

It stands to reason that by waiving the charge that Freddie might take in less revenue, but a GSE spokesman said as a financial matter, “it’s not material.”

In total, almost 72 percent of all Ocwen employees are domiciled overseas where labor costs are much cheaper.

Conforming loan limits could go up for the first time in years as the Federal Housing Finance Agency formally announced plans to use one of its own home price indexes to calculate changes. “Given the rising prices, it is now important that FHFA formally establish the specific methodology it will use for tracking prices and adjusting the baseline loan limit,” the agency said in a public notice seeking feedback. The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 prevents...

Six months into the latest representations-and-warranties framework from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, lenders said they appreciate the added clarity but are approaching the changes with caution as more transparency is still needed. The new rules, announced by the government-sponsored enterprises in November 2014, were made to ease lenders’ concerns about repurchase requests for loans that contain data inaccuracies or misrepresentations. During last week’s secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association, Jeremy Potter, general counsel and chief compliance officer at Norcom Mortgage, said...