Fairholme Funds officials this week continued to press their case for restoring shareholder rights for private investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, expressing hope that the incoming Trump administration will be friendlier to their cause. In Fairholme Funds Inc. v. United States, et al, the plaintiffs argue that the net worth sweep imposed by the Treasury Department and Federal Housing Finance Agency was illegal and that the two government-sponsored enterprises were not in a “death spiral” at the time of the bailout as the government claims. During a conference call this week, Fairholme CEO Bruce Berkowitz said...

Bank mortgage repurchase activity rose again in the third quarter of 2016, although most of the increase is tied to Bank of America clearing up old buyback issues. Commercial banks and savings institutions reported $884.4 million in single-family mortgage repurchases and indemnifications during the third quarter. That was up 10.0 percent from the previous period and marked the third consecutive quarterly increase in repurchase activity ... [Includes one data chart]

Through three quarters this year, Quicken Loans was the top lender of FHA mortgages and Freedom Mortgage was the top VA mortgage originator.

Eight of the top 10 jumbo lenders had declines in jumbo originations on a quarterly basis in the third quarter.

The government-sponsored enterprises’ credit-risk transfer programs have been wildly popular with investors and many policymakers, but other industry observers see problems. One of the most outspoken critics is Tim Howard, a former Fannie Mae CFO, who sees a big difference between today’s CRT programs and the GSEs’ traditional method of laying off credit risk before they were taken into government conservatorship. “When I was at Fannie, the companies purchased...

Three financial-industry trade associations submitted a joint amici brief to the Supreme Court of the U.S. seeking an end to the confusion over whether extender statutes that refer only to the “statute of limitations” should apply to the “statute of repose” as well. The circuit courts are split on the issue, with four courts deviating from a 2014 SCOTUS ruling in CTS v. Waldburger, in which property owners tried to hold CTS Corp., operator of an electronic plant in North Carolina, liable for damages from toxic contaminants on the land. The property owners filed...

Freddie Mac is set to issue a $459.92 million Whole Loan Securities transaction, according to a presale report from Moody’s Investors Service.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have sold more than 59,629 nonperforming loans with a total unpaid principal balance of $11.9 billion, through August 2016, according to a new Federal Housing Finance Agency report.

Tim Howard, former Fannie Mae CFO, called Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s credit risk transfer program “exercises in deception.”

The September figures represented a 5.7 percent increase from the midway point in the year and an 8.8 percent climb from a year ago.