As the Federal Housing Finance Agency ponders possible improvements to the government’s Home Affordable Refinance Program, calls from different corners of the industry are growing louder for the FHFA to end fees charged to borrowers who refinance Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago’s long awaited capital stock conversion plan has received the thumbs up from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, moving the Bank a giant step toward regaining equal footing with its fellow FHLBanks.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued $177.19 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities during the third quarter of 2011, a modest 14.3 percent improvement following two straight quarterly declines during the first six months of this year.The recent July-September cycle represented one of the weakest quarters historically for GSE MBS production since the financial markets crashed at the end of 2008.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s announcement last month that it is considering increased risk sharing with mortgage insurers, which could mitigate the negative effect of conforming mortgage guarantee fee increases over the coming years, while the Federal Reserve’s recently unveiled “Operation Twist” is likely to provide a “modest near-term boost to mortgage markets,” according to a report by Moody’s Investors Service.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency knew or should have known about improper foreclosure practices involving Fannie Mae affiliated law firms long before the Finance Agency began a review, according to the regulator’s official watchdog.The FHFA Office of Inspector General’s latest audit found that the FHFA did not investigate complaints about Fannie’s Retained Attorney Network until August 2010 in the wake of negative news reports alleging that RAN attorneys had engaged in inappropriate foreclosure practices, such as routinely filing false documents in court proceedings and “robo-signing.”

The ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is calling on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to “give serious consideration” to shuttering Fannie Mae’s Retained Attorney Network, but not before answering questions and providing documents about the FHFA’s oversight of the program.

Women, on average, pay more for mortgages than men even after taking into account variables like borrower characteristics, mortgage features and market conditions, according to a new study published in the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. The authors, economists Ping Cheng, Zhenguo Lin and Yingchun Liu, suggest that the difference may have more to do with the way men and women seek out lenders than gender discrimination by lenders. The study – “Do Women Pay More for Mortgages?” – notes that the share of single women homebuyers doubled from about one in ten homebuyers 15 years ago to about one in five in 2003. More than...

The Obama administration’s Housing Scorecard for September paints a reasonably rosy picture of efforts to help troubled homeowners and future market prospects. With record low mortgage interest rates, housing affordability increased modestly. But the number of new default notices rose from 59,500 in August to 78,900, which is still well below the 96,500 level of a year ago. Notably, sales of real estate owned properties were down this period. Preliminary numbers from July 2011 show that there were 46,200 REO sales, as opposed to 62,200 in June and 61,800 a year ago. New home sales were down slightly in...

Chase Home Finance surged past Bank of America to become the second most prolific producer of agency MBS during the third quarter, according to a new ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. Chase has played third fiddle behind BofA and Wells Fargo for the past few years, and still ranked third in agency MBS production on a year-to-date basis. But BofA has been dumping mortgage production capacity and trying to claw its way to higher ground while Chase has made modest gains in market share. Those trends are likely to accelerate in coming months as BofA closes down its correspondent business after failing to find a...(Includes two data charts)

The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wants the Federal Housing Finance Agency to explain why it hired two outside law firms in a massive legal action to recover losses suffered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on their investments in non-agency MBS. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, wrote FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco on Sept. 29 asking why the agency hired outside counsel from Quinn Emanuel & Sullivan and from Kasowitz Benson Torres & Freidman to initiate lawsuits against financial institutions and how much the agency is paying them. Issa posed detailed questions and requested documents regarding...