Loan repurchases by seller/servicers fell last year, a sign that the worst of this problem may be over for the industry. Or is that wishful thinking?

Rep. Maxine Waters, the ranking minority member of the House Financial Services Committee, believes that now is "precisely the time to think about how we can reshape the secondary mortgage market."

It appears that well known economist Mark Zandi is indeed a candidate to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency. But will the White House actually nominate him?

Although the nation's largest lender, Wells Fargo, saw residential fundings slip in the first quarter, Citigroup had a gain.

It’s been a longstanding and usually treacherous tradition in the mortgage industry that when origination volume starts to sag, lenders begin to expand the credit box. One quarter does not a trend make, but the pattern in credit characteristics of loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suggest that some easing may be underway as the market works to sustain production volume. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of first-quarter sales to the government-sponsored enterprises ... [Includes one data chart]

Gain-on-sale margins for mortgage originations declined for lenders during the first quarter of 2013, according to industry analysts, but a number of factors appear likely to keep the margins this year well above historical levels. Core gain-on-sale margins for the major banks fell to 2.9 percent in the first quarter of 2013, according to estimates by Credit Suisse Securities, down from 3.3 percent in the previous quarter and from a high of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2012. The analysts warn ...

Despite an uptick in the fourth quarter, the volume of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages repurchased by lenders declined by 10.3 percent from 2011 to 2012, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of data reported by the government-sponsored enterprises. In their year-end earnings reports, the GSEs said total repurchases and other resolutions of buyback demands – typically indemnification of the GSEs’ loss – dropped to $20.57 billion last year. It was still the second ... [Includes one data chart]

Despite its efforts to enhance its hiring outreach to potential minority and women contractors and employees during 2012, the Federal Housing Finance Agency still faces challenges finding qualified and diverse candidates, according to a new report to Congress by the FHFA’s Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. Established under a Dodd-Frank Act mandate, the OMWI noted that the Finance Agency’s overall representation of minorities and women “compares favorably to that of the federal and private workforces.” The FHFA’s 585 staffers in 2012 were comprised of 32.4 percent minorities and 46.7 females, compared to the federal government’s breakdown of 34.1 percent minorities and 43.5 percent females.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each received high marks on a relatively easy performance test from the Federal Housing Finance Agency in the GSEs’ compliance with the FHFA’s Conservatorship Scorecard, both companies revealed in their fourth quarter 2012 financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In March 2012, the FHFA developed, with input from GSE management, the boards of directors and the companies’ compensation committees, a set of performance objectives and directed each firm to implement them. The three strategic goals of the scorecard called for the GSEs to build a new securitization infrastructure, contract Fannie’s and Freddie’s dominant marketplace presence and maintain foreclosure prevention activities and credit availability for new and refinance mortgages.

UBS Americas failed in its bid to shut down a lawsuit brought by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in connection with non-agency mortgage-backed securities purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while in another case three former Freddie executives lost their own bid to dismiss a Securities and Exchange Commission securities fraud case against them. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld a lower court’s ruling that denied UBS’ motion to dismiss the FHFA’s suit as time barred. In the summer of 2011, the FHFA filed 18 lawsuits in Manhattan federal court against UBS and other big banks on behalf of the GSEs, alleging violations of the federal Securities Act of 1933 for approximately $200 billion in non-agency MBS sold to Fannie and Freddie.