Mel Watt has quickly endeared himself to lenders, home builders and Realtors by delaying (scrapping?) Ed DeMarco's g-fee hike. As for Mr. DeMarco...

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-ID, are drafting their own housing finance reform/GSE bill that likely will be superimposed over the Corker-Warner measure.

The FHA reviewed 6,692 government-insured loans between July 1 and Sept. 30, 70 percent of which were home-purchase loans.

Through the first nine months of 2013, an estimated 22 percent of the $1.59 trillion in mortgages originated (including second liens) had non-agency execution.

Jeff Detwiler, president and chief operating officer of Long & Foster Companies, noted that that higher interest rates are playing a “big role” in the lower home sales realtors are seeing in the Washington DC metro area.

The former House Democrat has already halted – for now – certain DeMarco-era directives, including the FHFA’s December announcement of a 10-basis point guaranty fee increase.

While activity plummeted in the second half of the year, jumbo MBS production in 2013 was nearly four times the level from the previous year.

Mel Watt, the incoming director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, appears to be taking a less aggressive stance toward decreasing the government-sponsored enterprises’ dominance of the mortgage market than Ed DeMarco, the acting director of the FHFA. The FHFA in December announced changes to GSE mortgage-backed security guaranty fees that would amount to an average increase of approximately 11 basis points, to be implemented in March and April ...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said in December that it would wait until at least October before setting new “purchase limits” for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The regulator of the two government-sponsored enterprises is considering establishing purchase limits below the statutory conforming loan limits. In the highest-cost markets, the biggest loan the GSEs could buy would be $600,000, instead of $625,500. The national purchase limit would be $400,000, roughly 4 percent below the $417,000 conforming ...

Recent announcements of revised loan-level price adjustments for the government-sponsored enterprises and risk-based pricing are fueling fears of FHA resurgence in the market. Consistent with the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s stated intent to raise the GSE guaranty fees by about 11 basis points, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac released revised loan-level price adjustments (LLPAs) on Dec. 16. The upfront fee hike takes mortgage rates for affected borrowers close to FHA pricing levels, according to industry analysts.