The three major credit bureaus plan to exclude two critical pieces of negative information from their reports, which may make it easier for some borrowers to qualify for a mortgage. Many tax liens and civil judgments, which can weigh down a credit score, will be removed. As part of a multi-year plan to alleviate incorrect information, on July 1, Equifax, Experian and Transunion will apply new public record standards when it comes to collecting and the timely updating of civil judgments and tax liens, the Consumer Data Industry Association said this week. The new standard will apply...

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae securitized $183.69 billion of newly originated mortgages produced through the wholesale-broker channel last year, a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis reveals. That was up 22.2 percent from 2015 volume, the biggest increase among the three mortgage-production channels. The biggest increase for broker originations was in Fannie mortgage-backed securities, rising 31.5 percent from 2015, accounting for 12.2 percent of the government-sponsored enterprise’s MBS issuance last year. The dataset includes only purchase and refinance loans that were securitized within six months of origination, and it excludes mortgages with no channel identification. Brokers earned...[Includes two data tables]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have a harder time recapitalizing if their deferred tax assets are negatively impacted by corporate tax reform, according to one GSE spectator....

Subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs (MTGLQ Investors) and Balbec Capital (Igloo Series II Trust) were the winning bidders of Fannie Mae's latest nonperforming loan sale announced this week. The four pools included a total of about 9,400 loans with an unpaid principal balance of $1.68 billion....

Virtually all the shrinkage in 2016 took place among the four megabanks with over $1 trillion in assets: Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citibank.

New issuance of single-family mortgage-backed securities by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fell 30.6 percent from January to February as the refinance business continued to weaken.The two GSEs issued a combined $63.67 billion of single-family MBS last month, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis and ranking. Absent a heavy refi flow, February is typically the low point in the annual cycle. A year ago, combined Fannie/Freddie production totaled just $50.05 billion in February. Production in the first two months of 2017 was up 45.7 percent from the same period last year, with big gains in both purchase (up 42.7 percent) and refi business (up 57.7 percent). But while purchase-mortgage lending is...

The government has until April 17 to prove that the 11,000 documents it is withholding are correctly labeled as “privileged.” This week, a ruling by Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney ordered the government to review the documents and release those that are non-privileged to the plaintiff’s attorneys in Fairholme Funds Inc. et al., v. The United States. The order came on the heels of a January appeals court ruling that found the bulk of a batch of 56 documents the government refused to turn over to the plaintiff’s attorneys, after being ordered to do so last year, did not merit privilege treatment. They included various memos, emails and presentations from the Treasury, Federal Housing...

Three prominent GSE reform proposals have been floated over the past year and the Urban Institute said they have more commonalities than differences. In an attempt to clarify some of the choices presented in the reform proposals, Jim Parrott, senior fellow at the UI, penned a paper highlighting the similarities and zeroing in on the differences. …

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have a harder time recapitalizing if their deferred tax assets are negatively impacted by corporate tax reform, according to one GSE spectator. The Trump administration said it plans to restructure taxes before housing reform. Industry observers, like former Fannie Mae CFO Tim Howard, speculate on what impact that would have on Fannie and Freddie. Howard said that putting housing reform behind tax reform adds a “complication to the task of ultimately recapitalizing the companies, should that be what [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin chooses to do.” Mnuchin recently made public comments on network news stating that while housing reform is one of his priorities, it’s going to take more time.

Freddie Mac implemented a few underwriting changes that went into effect this week regarding a borrower’s self-employment status, retirement accounts and commission income. The GSE announced that the documentation required for self-employed borrowers will be revised based on the number of years the borrower has been self-employed and the business has been in existence. Borrowers self-employed for less than five years will face greater scrutiny under the new requirement. Borrowers who are self-employed and have had a business operation for at least five years will require one year of personal and business returns. But those who have been self-employed with business in operation for less...