All seven active mortgage insurance companies reported a total of $31.34 billion of new primary insurance written during the first quarter, according to calculations from Inside Mortgage Finance.
A coalition of industry trade associations is urging the FHA to harmonize its regulatory treatment of transfer fee covenants with the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In a joint letter, the group said the FHFA’s final rule on transfer fee covenants “establishes a clear, national standard to protect homeowners from equity-stripping private transfer fees while preserving the preeminence of state and local governments over land-sue standards.” The letter was sent in response to reports that FHA may issue a proposed rule on transfer fee covenants that will apply to FHA-insured mortgages. A private transfer fee covenant is attached to real property by the owner or another private party – frequently the property developer – and provides for a fee to be paid to specified third party every time the property is resold. The fee typically is a percentage of the property’s sales price and ...
The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs is primed to resume its markup next week of legislation to reform the government-sponsored enterprises. While it remains unlikely that Congress will pass GSE reform legislation this year, industry participants of all sorts are working to change portions of the Senate bill. The markup last week was tabled after brief opening statements from Sens. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Mike Crapo, R-ID, who are trying to ...
The retained mortgage portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to decline through attrition during the first quarter of 2014 as the two government-sponsored enterprises reported some $9.3 billion in profit, due largely to non-agency MBS legal settlements. The two GSEs held a combined mortgage-investment portfolio of $902.1 billion at the end of March, down 5.2 percent from the previous quarter. The biggest decline was in MBS holdings, down 7.3 percent, including an 8.3 percent drop in Fannie’s and Freddie’s holdings of their own MBS. Wall Street investment bankers and non-agency MBS issuers paid...[Includes one data chart]
The Federal Housing Finance Agency may soon ask for industry feedback on loan-level price adjustments, those annoying charges that result in extra fees being heaped on borrowers because they have FICO scores or downpayments that don’t fall into the category of being “pristine.” Moreover, industry executives, their lobbyists and advisors believe that over the next few months the agency may offer a trade: no increase in guaranty fees in exchange for some tweaking of LLPAs. Industry observers believe...
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a combined $67.1 billion of single-family MBS during April, a solid 23.6 percent increase from the previous month, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. Agency MBS issuance has been in a prolonged downward spiral that started after a modest spurt in production in April 2013, when new issuance hit $153.6 billion, well more than double the volume in April of this year. The upside is that the volume of purchase mortgages coming into the agency market continued to build momentum through the peak home-buying season in 2013. The purchase-mortgage sector has become...[Includes two data charts]
Overall, refi loans accounted for 45.7 percent of agency MBS production in the first four months of 2014, compared to 77.2 percent during the same period last year.
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