Although Freddie Mac did not disclose the exact purchase price, it said the cover bid was in "the mid 70s of UPB..."

Although only 13 banks reported net losses on mortgage banking during 1Q – compared to 756 institutions with net profits – several of the top players earned less than they did in the fourth quarter.

One new portfolio that came out for bid recently entails the transfer of $328 million of Fannie Mae receivables in Massachusetts.

The common securitization platform and single security are years away, but officials from the GSEs, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Common Securitization Solutions, LLC, offered additional information about future plans and the inner workings of the platform at the Mortgage Bankers Association Secondary Conference in New York this week. Robert Fishman, FHFA’s senior associate director in the office of strategic initiatives, said the two initiatives are intimately related because the CSP will be the platform to issue the single security. The CSP was already been underway when the single security was announced a year ago. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “are critical to the current function of the housing market. So while it’s very helpful to think about the...

A possible cyber attack on the GSEs was one of the focuses of a semi-annual report to Congress by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General. The computer systems of Fannie and Freddie could be vulnerable to security breaches and unauthorized access, according to the report, which noted that the IG specifically worries about hackers possibly stealing confidential information and/or planting computer viruses within the systems of the GSEs. “Among other things, a breach of an enterprise’s security system could disrupt its business operations or result in the unauthorized disclosure or misuse, computer viruses or other malicious codes, or other attempts to harm them or misuse or steal confidential information,” said the report.

Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s new business volume in the first quarter represented a huge increase from the feeble start back in early 2014, with all major markets showing strong gains.A new Inside The GSEs analysis of GSE business lenders in the first quarter shows that California posted one of the biggest gains compared to a year ago. The Golden State produced $44.95 billion of new Fannie/Freddie mortgages, up 69.6 percent from the first quarter of 2014. Over that same period, GSE business grew by 43.3 percent nationally.As usual, California accounted for a substantial Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s new business volume in the first quarter represented a huge increase from the feeble start back in early 2014, with all major markets showing strong gains.A new Inside The GSEs analysis of GSE business lenders in the first quarter shows that California posted one of the biggest gains compared to a year ago. The Golden State produced $44.95 billion of new Fannie/Freddie mortgages, up 69.6 percent from the first quarter of 2014. Over that same period, GSE business grew by 43.3 percent nationally.

Commercial banks and thrifts held $1.58 trillion of residential MBS at the end of March, a 2.6 percent increase from the previous quarter.

One market participant, speaking under the condition his name not be used, likened it to MBS buyers “going on strike.”

The mortgage market faces a big challenge when the Federal Reserve figures out how to unload its massive $1.7 trillion portfolio of agency MBS, but anticipated widening of spreads could at least improve market liquidity. The fixed-income market has seen a sharp decline in trading volume resulting in part from regulatory issues, said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, during the group’s annual secondary market conference in New York this week. “Banks have been hoarding liquidity instead of providing it to the market,” he said. Average daily trading volume of MBS has dropped...

Officials involved in the development of the common securitization platform and the single, interchangeable MBS for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have vowed not to publicize any timetable for the project. And despite several attempts to get an answer during a panel session at this week’s secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association, they stuck to their plan. They went out of their way to stress that they haven’t forgotten about potential non-agency users sometime down the road. But that’s...