It appears that Ethos Lending will enter the non-QM market come October...

Broker originations also had a significantly larger average loan amount, $230,082, than the other channels.

On a year-to-date basis, mortgage sales were down 63.6 percent from the first half of 2013.

The non-agency MBS market remains stuck in the post-crisis doldrums, showing no signs of recovering, according to experts participating at this week’s Bipartisan Policy Center’s Housing Summit in Washington, DC. Efforts to ignite the growth in non-agency securitization channels to help reduce the government’s role in housing finance and draw back private capital have produced little result. Except for sporadic twitches, thanks to a smattering of deals backed by jumbo loans, the non-agency MBS market is barely alive, panelists said. The government, which is working to revive the non-agency market, sees...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were both active this week with multifamily MBS transactions, but they’ll have to double-time it if they plan to match last year’s levels. The odds are against them. Fannie’s multifamily new business volume came to $13.8 billion through August 2014, compared with $20.4 billion the year before. The government-sponsored enterprise would have to crank out another $15 billion in the last four months of 2014 to match the 2013 total of $28.8 billion. For rival Freddie, multifamily new business activity totaled...

Commercial banks hate mortgages. No, they don't. Yes, they do. No they don't. Yes, they do...

Congress should put the screws to the Treasury Department to disclose all documents pertaining to the origins of the Obama administration’s controversial “net-worth sweep” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits, according to a coalition of right-leaning public policy groups. In a letter dispatched late this week to the top Republican and Democrat of the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, the 17 groups led by the Competitive Enterprise Institute urged lawmakers to intervene to impose transparency over what GSE shareholders consider an extra-legal maneuver by the executive branch.

Hundreds of community banks, credit unions and community development financial intuitions within the Federal Home Loan Bank system will be adversely impacted and even face expulsion from the FHLBanks if a proposed Federal Housing Finance Agency rule change goes into effect, say rule opponents. The FHFA’s proposal, issued earlier this month, would change the FHLBank membership qualifications by imposing an ongoing asset test on FHLB members, requiring that they track and report on the mortgage-related assets they hold on their books.

The Senate voted this week to approve the nomination of Laura Wertheimer to be the newest Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Wertheimer, a Washington, DC, securities lawyer in private practice, was nominated by President Obama in May to replace Steve Linick, who resigned in the summer of 2013 to serve as the State Department’s IG.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not ready for the new representation and warranty framework that took effect early last year at the insistence of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to a new Inspector General audit. Announced in September 2012 and implemented Jan. 1, 2013, the framework relieved sellers from certain reps and warrants, including those relating to credit underwriting and eligibility of the borrower and the property that were formerly effective for the life of the loan.