Just how big is Wells Fargo's Ginnie Mae market share? At Sept. 30, the bank controlled 31.53 percent of the market. Its closest competitor was JPMorgan Chase with a mere 11.75 percent.

Late last week, the CFPB released updates to its exam procedures in connection with the new mortgage regulations issued in January 2013 and amended through Oct. 15, 2013. The updates offer financial institutions and other industry participants valuable guidance on how the bureau will conduct examinations for compliance with the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, the agency said. The bureau updated the supervision manual to reflect the renumbering of the consumer financial protection regulations for...

The GSEs are beginning to take in a significant amount of money from R&W settlements, but both stand to reap an even larger windfall from a pending civil lawsuit filed by the FHFA against 17 issuers of private label MBS.

Meanwhile, the regulator Monday morning unveiled new “master policy” requirements for the MI industry, which will make it harder for insurance firms to get out paying claims on defaulted mortgages.

The Alt A origination estimate is based on the volume of first-lien conventional mortgages with interest rates ranging from 150 basis points over the prime mortgage rate to 300 bps over.

Although the Federal Housing Finance Agency has said it wants more “parity” in the MBS guaranty fees paid by large and small lenders, observers say the playing field remains uneven. One trade group official, who spoke on the condition his name not be used, said as far as he can see there are still “meaningful differences” in what smaller lenders pay in g-fees compared to their larger competitors. He added...

Mortgages originated by brokers and correspondents, once a concern for MBS investors, have actually performed better in recent years than retail-originated loans, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The rating service said risks from third-party originations will remain low if lenders continue to put an emphasis on retail-originated mortgages. Default rates on securitized mortgages have decreased significantly in recent years regardless of origination channel. However, Moody’s noted that beginning in 2010, production from third-party originators started performing better than retail mortgages. From 2003 through 2009, third-party originations defaulted...

The fallout from last week’s trigger of the “nuclear option” by Senate Democrats, which is expected to lead to the confirmation of President Obama’s choice to be the new director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has analysts worried about the possibility of expanded Home Affordable Refinance Program eligibility. The Senate voted to confirm most executive and judicial nominees by a simple majority vote, and it dramatically improves the prospects of Rep. Mel Watt, D-NC, to replace FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco. A career civil servant who has been the chief regulator of the government-sponsored enterprises for the past four years, DeMarco has resisted proposals to expand HARP and broaden the GSE loan-modification options to include principal write-downs. Expanding HARP has been...[Includes one data chart]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are designing a securitization framework that will work for today’s fully-guaranteed residential MBS as well as securities with a partial government guaranty or none at all, according to an update released this week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Among the initiatives set for the government-sponsored enterprises by the FHFA is the development of a contractual and disclosure framework (CDF) designed to give MBS investors more clarity and confidence about what they’re buying. Along with the common securitization platform, the CDF project is a major component of the MBS architecture of the future that the GSEs are building. A lot of the CDF work involves...

The five-year transition toward a non-agency market contemplated in government-sponsored enterprise reform legislation in the Senate is far from guaranteed, according to industry participants. A number of questions have been raised about the timing and the ability of private players to replace the GSEs. “The idea that ‘if you build it, they will come,’ may work in the movies, but you are playing with the nation’s housing-finance system,” James Millstein, chairman and CEO of Millstein & Co., an advisory group ...