“As lawmakers, it is time to open up our eyes and open up our minds to alternative models and a pathway forward,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, at the beginning of a hearing he convened this week to consider housing finance models without explicit government guaranties. Hensarling, along with many Republicans in his committee, is angling to replace the government-sponsored enterprises with some sort of a non-agency market. However, a number of obstacles exist in that path, including the preference among Democrats and a significant portion of industry players for the GSEs’ functions to be replaced with some form of government guaranty. Most of the witnesses at the hearing provided...

Freddie Mac’s recently announced low-activity fee for seller/servicers not meeting new quotas for loan deliveries and mortgage servicing would limit the ability of community banks to provide mortgages to their customers and should be repealed before the policy takes effect next year, according to two industry trade groups. Last week, the Independent Community Bankers of America dispatched a letter to the government-sponsored enterprise and its conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, stating that Freddie’s assessment of a $7,500 annual fee to lenders who fail to deliver mortgage loans with an aggregate principal balance of more than $5 million or who service mortgages for the GSE with an aggregate balance of at least $25 million “goes too far.” The trade group complained...

The federal government seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by extra-legal means during the 2008 financial crisis and then went out of its way to curtail the two government-sponsored enterprises’ profits while unjustly denying GSE shareholders just compensation for their deliberately devalued holdings, according to a lawsuit filed this week. The suit filed by GSE shareholders in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, DC, asserts the takeover of Fannie and Freddie by the Federal Housing Finance Agency was “unlawful and unwarranted” and an unconstitutional violation of due process which cost investors billions of dollars. “Even if a statutory basis existed...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is holding a two-day, closed-door working group Thursday and Friday with force-placed insurance stakeholders following the FHFA’s recent actions to shutter an insurance proposal by Fannie Mae and its policy proposal to develop a set of force-placed aligned standards.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, countered that a purely non-agency mortgage market would be “a disaster to our economy.”

Bank of America recorded $10.45 billion of mortgage repurchases and indemnifications during the first quarter of 2013, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of recently released call report data.

Freddie Mac's low activity fee could add more than $2 million to its bottom line.

Roughly $148 billion of single-family agency MBS were issued last month, down almost 3 percent from April’s level. May was the slowest month for agency MBS issuance so far in 2013.

Among the many allegations, the plaintiffs charge that the seizure of Fannie and Freddie was “unlawful and unwarranted” and represents an unconstitutional violation of due process which cost investors billions of dollars.

Community banks are getting slapped with a "low activity" fee from Freddie Mac and the ICBA is not happy.