Real estate investment trusts are beginning to scale back their investments in MBS. Meanwhile, some are hunting for MSRs.

Risk-sharing transactions using credit-linked notes may be one path toward the goal of getting the government-sponsored enterprises out of conservatorship, experts told members of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment this week. The current GSE MBS market provides trillions of dollars of financing to the mortgage market while government guaranties and other structural features are required to maintain this market, according to Andrew Davidson, president of Andrew Davidson & Co. “As any part of GSE reform, I believe...

Freddie Mac is offering $1.0 billion of its non-agency MBS holdings for sale, according to a spokesman for the government-sponsored enterprise, part of efforts to meet requirements set by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Fannie Mae also plans asset sales of some sort, but wouldn’t commit to selling its non-agency MBS holdings. Freddie held $70.28 billion in non-agency MBS at the end of the first quarter of 2013 and Fannie held $31.22 billion. The GSEs purchased the non-agency MBS before 2009 and have allowed the holdings to run off ever since. The FHFA recently required...

Over the past few weeks, speculators have been driving up the price of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac common stock and “trust” preferred shares in the hope of a payoff somewhere down the line. But according to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance, the only payoff might come if they can find someone else willing to pay more than they did for stock that is considered virtually worthless. Industry lobbyists, former government-sponsored enterprise executives and some investors say...

More Fannie Mae mortgage business is ending up in multi-issuer pools as more lenders turn to direct sales to the government-sponsored enterprise, and experts say the company has been able to turn the trend to its advantage in the securities market. According to a new loan-level analysis of single-family mortgage-backed securities by Inside Mortgage Finance, some 39.1 percent of Fannie’s MBS production in the first quarter of 2013 was in multi-issuer pools. That compared to 30.0 percent, by dollar volume, of the GSE’s MBS issuance back in the first quarter of last year. Single-seller pools, generated mostly by the giants of the mortgage lending industry, continue...

Fannie Mae and Bank of America resolved a huge portion of the whopping $19.04 billion in disputed buyback requests facing the mortgage industry at the beginning of 2013, but both government-sponsored enterprises will remain aggressive in hunting for repurchase opportunities. In fact, new repurchase requests increased by a whopping 87.8 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the fourth quarter of 2012, reaching a record $12.14 billion, according to an analysis of GSE quarterly reports by Inside Mortgage Finance. The biggest increase was at Fannie Mae, where new buyback requests soared to $9.91 billion, while Freddie Mac reported a more modest 5.2 percent increase. The jump in new buyback demands occurred...[Includes one data chart]

Are investors making a big mistake by speculating in Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac common and preferred?

Loan brokerage firms are continuing to hire, even though their market share declined slightly in the first quarter.

Essent, the number-five player in mortgage insurance, has received ratings from both S&P and Moody's.

Although loan broker employment continues to rise, the market share for table funding declined in the first quarter, according to exclusive survey figures from Inside Mortgage Finance.