Lenders funded an estimated $20 billion of new home-equity lines of credit during the third quarter, a 17.6 percent gain from 2Q, according to IMF.

Loan Care Servicing, an affiliate of Black Knight Financial, subserviced $110.0 billion at Sept. 30, up 47.4 percent from a year ago.

Lenders are likely to shift some of their business away from the government-sponsored enterprises and into the non-agency market in the coming years, regardless of GSE reform efforts, according to a report released this week by the Congressional Budget Office. “With house prices expected to trend upward, the balance sheets of lenders and investors should improve, as should borrowers’ financial positions,” the nonpartisan provider of analysis for Congress said. “Consequently, CBO projects that private companies will become more willing to make new loans and demand lower fees to compensate for the credit risks they take, which will reduce Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s pricing advantage over their private competitors.” If the private sector bears more mortgage credit risk, the CBO said...

Based on the upward production trend over the last three quarters, it appears the private MIs are on their way to a strong close at year-end.

More than half of Fannie’s MBS flow in November came from refinance loans, the first time since March that purchase mortgages accounted for less than half of its business.

The subordinated debt deal will double the capital base of Skyline Lending.

As of September 30, banks and thrifts held $15.50 billion in repurchase reserves, most of it tied to Fannie/Freddie loans.

Bank and thrift MSR holdings peaked at $5.977 trillion back at the end of 2009.

Supporters of the non-agency residential MBS market will have plenty of heavy lifting to do next year, as they face an anticipated increase in volatility for some deals and a continued dominating presence in the broader market by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, among a host of challenges. But at least there’s some degree of regulatory certainty for the market now, and it’s likely that opportunities will emerge for savvy investors to snap up some extra yield, according to a consensus of Wall Street analysts who cover the space. Analysts at Fitch Ratings expect to see the continuation of a slow recovery for the non-agency MBS space in 2015. “The recovery in primary U.S. RMBS issuance remains anemic as the industry continues to face challenges including continued government-sponsored enterprise dominance, more attractive financing alternatives such as whole-loan sales, new mortgage regulation, and a weak AAA investor base,” Fitch analysts said in a 2015 outlook piece. Also, despite the industry’s renewed efforts led by the Structured Finance Industry Group to resolve the absence of necessary structural reforms after the financial crisis, progress is...

Seasonal trends hit the GSE single-family mortgage-backed securities business in November, with new issuance of single-family MBS tumbling 15.1 percent from October. A new Inside the GSEs analysis of loan-level MBS disclosures reveals that a sharp 22.0 percent drop in securitization of purchase-money mortgages was the major factor in the November decline. Refinance loans delivered to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MBS pools were off a milder 6.8 percent from the previous month. In fact, more than half of Fannie’s MBS flow in November came from refinance loans, the first time since March that purchase mortgages accounted for less than half of the GSE’s business. One sign of the increased refinance share of GSE business ... [with two exclusive charts]