The House Financial Services Committee this week marked up legislation to block pay raises for the top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to extend qualified-mortgage status to loans originated for an institution’s retained portfolio. H.R. 1210, the Portfolio Lending and Mortgage Access Act, introduced by Rep. Andy Barr, R-KY, would extend qualified-mortgage protection from litigation and enforcement actions for mortgages originated and retained in portfolio by depository institutions. “This would incentivize private-sector risk retention,” said Barr. Rep. John Carney, D-DE, said...

Industry participants largely support a plan from the Federal Housing Finance Agency to tie adjustments of the conforming loan limits to the FHFA’s “expanded data” House Price Index. The extent to which conforming loan limits should be adjusted, however, remains a topic subject to debate. In May, the FHFA noted that home prices were close to recovering from the aftermath of the financial crisis, which could prompt an increase to the conforming loan limit. The $417,000 conforming loan limit took effect in 2006 and the FHFA was prevented from reducing the limit by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. The FHFA proposed...

The Government Accountability Office wants federal regulators responsible for reviewing the qualified mortgage and qualified residential mortgage rules to make sure they consider specific metrics and analytic methods. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the other federal agencies are slated to issue a review of the QM rule in January. The review of the QRM standard, part of a mortgage-securitization rule, won’t happen until 2019. So far, the regulatory agencies have identified...

Among the top 10 contributors to jumbo MBS through two quarters this year, half were banks or associated with banks.

Meanwhile, the thrift’s gain-on-sale profit totaled 121 basis points compared to 127 in 1Q and just 82 in the second quarter of 2014.

Purchase loans made by Guild totaled $4.4 billion in the first half of 2015, accounting for 66.1 percent of all production.

PennyMac increased its servicing portfolio to $136 billion at June 30, an 18.2 percent sequential gain.

The complaints that consumers filed with the CFPB about various aspects of their mortgages generally rose in the second quarter, as the mortgage market churned out new originations at elevated levels, a new analysis by Inside the CFPB found. Total consumer gripes rose 7.5 percent from the first quarter of 2015 to the second, the latest data from the bureau’s consumer complaint database show. The increase was largely driven by a surge of criticisms about the mortgage loan application and origination process, which climbed 11.8 percent during the period. Grumbling about loan modifications also increased during the period ending June 30, up 5.7 percent, a much higher rate of increase than the recent upward tick seen in default rates. Grievances ...

The 25 largest banks held $1.15 trillion in MBS at the end of June, according to an Inside MBS & ABS analysis of Federal Reserve data.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac risk-sharing transactions have gained steam in the first half of 2015 with the GSEs issuing $7.04 billion through the end of June, a 62.9 percent increase over the first half of last year. Since the credit-risk transfer program launched in July 2013, the two government-sponsored enterprises have sold $19.61 billion of CRT bonds to a growing universe of investors. The CRT bonds transferred a portion of the credit risk on some $704.45 billion of single-family MBS. In addition, Fannie and Freddie have purchased...