New mortgage insurance eligibility rules proposed earlier this month by the Federal Housing Finance Agency appear likely to cause some MIs to tweak their corporate structures and/or to raise additional capital, note industry observers. In its draft Private Mortgage Insurer Eligibility Requirements, the FHFA directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to revise, expand and align their risk management requirements for mortgage insurance counterparties.The updated financial requirements incorporate a new, risk-based framework that ensures that approved insurers have a sufficient level of liquid assets from which to pay claims.

Critic: CFPB Regulations Ensure Fannie, Freddie Market Dominance. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, through its scores of regulations, has stifled and discouraged mortgage market growth away from the GSEs, a critic of the bureau noted during the CFPB’s third anniversary last week. “One of the important effects of the CFPB has been to ensure the continuing market dominance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the way they have written their mortgage regulations, which give you a pass if you make a loan eligible for sale to Fannie or Freddie or give you very onerous legal risks if you don’t,” said Alex Pollock, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in June rebounded from a decline the previous month with a big boost in the volume of single-family mortgages securitized by the two GSEs, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. Fannie and Freddie issued $51.6 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities in June, a 15.2 percent jump from the previous month. Year-to-date MBS issuance was down 60.9 percent from the same period a year ago.

California remains the top source of new single-family mortgages for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even as Fannie remains the dominant GSE in terms of production through the first half of the year, according to an Inside The GSEs analysis. A total of $56.9 billion in home loans on Golden State properties were securitized by the two GSEs during the first six months of 2014, accounting for 21.0 percent of their total business for the half year.

The first-time homebuyer share of home purchases has increased for four consecutive months, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. First-time homebuyer activity tends to increase through the spring homebuying season, but the first-time homebuyer share is at particularly high levels this year. First-time homebuyers accounted for 37.2 percent of home purchases in June, based on a three-month moving average. That was up from a 34.2 percent share in March, and the last time the first-time homebuyer share of home purchases was at 37.2 percent was September 2010. According to real estate agents, first-time buyers appear...

A federal judge last week granted limited discovery to a hedge fund representing a group of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders as they challenge the government’s “net worth sweep” of their profits. But the court will keep a tight lid on public access to the documents in a nod to the government’s claim that a leak could have dire economic consequences on the mortgage market. Fairholme Capital Management has been pushing hard for discovery and access to internal government documents since the shareholder filed suit last summer demanding that the Treasury Department void its August 2012 Third Amendment to its preferred stock purchase agreement with Fannie and Freddie. In her ruling, Judge Margaret Sweeney of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims was...

As a way to keep a tight grip on counterparty risk, Freddie Mac will start conducting bimonthly “operational reviews of certain specialty servicers” later this year. Not to be outdone, Fannie Mae will also perform such reviews, but only when a seller/servicer reaches a “certain mortgage loan delivery threshold.” The news – contained in a recent report from the Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Agency – isn’t likely to warm the hearts of fast growing nonbanks. Both Nationstar Mortgage and Walter Investment Management are mentioned by name in the report, which voices concerns thatsome nonbanks pose a risk to the government-sponsored enterprises because they have “limited financial capacity” to make good on representation and warranty contracts. Nationstar and Walter are...

More than two years have passed since Bank of America parted ways with Fannie Mae on selling new purchase-money loans to the government-sponsored enterprise and no remedy seems in sight regarding a resolution to the matter. “There’s no change that I’m aware of related to the Fannie Mae situation,” said a spokesman for the bank. “We’re able to handle our loan origination business just fine with Freddie Mac.” According to figures compiled by Inside MBS & ABS, BofA did sell...

MBS from Freddie Mac backed by modified mortgages offer investors protection from prepayment risk in an environment in which interest rates are expected to climb, according to analysts at Barclays Capital. The analysts said Freddie’s H-pools are particularly attractive, as the loans in the deals have been restructured under the Home Affordable Modification Program. Slightly more than $1.0 billion in H-pools have been issued, with the most recent activity in October. Barclays noted that Freddie could significantly increase its issuance of H-pools as the government-sponsored enterprise has accumulated a substantial amount of modified mortgages in its retained portfolio in recent years. Freddie had...

Fannie Mae late last week priced its third credit risk-sharing deal of 2014. The $2.05 billion note is the government-sponsored enterprise’s fourth and largest transaction under its Connecticut Avenue Securities series since the Federal Housing Finance Agency ordered both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to shrink the GSEs’ role in the U.S. housing market last year. In its latest offering – Series 2014-C03 – Fannie included reference loans with original loan-to-value ratios of up to 97 percent and “is consistent with prior transactions.” Previous C-deal offerings included reference loans with up to 80 percent LTV ratios. “We’ve continued...