Investors have bid up the value of MBS the past two weeks, with agency product hitting new 52-week highs. This development benefits investors as long as interest rates don’t fall dramatically enough to spark prepayment concerns. In particular, analysts are paying close attention to publicly traded mortgage real estate investment trusts that hold agency MBS. According to figures compiled by Inside MBS & ABS, REITs held $286.3 billion of MBS at the end of June after increasing their holdings by 9.7 percent during the second quarter. Now, those bets are paying off...

The substantial increase in federal support of the single-family housing finance system, as well as weaknesses uncovered in the wake of the mortgage market meltdown, have led to a U.S. finance system that warrants reform, according to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO focused considerable attention on the much-reported fact that government programs have accounted for a huge share of the mortgage and MBS market since the financial crisis. The congressional watchdog views the federal role in housing finance as a “high-risk area.” “Developments in mortgage markets since 2000 have challenged...

GSE shareholder advocates remain undeterred following a federal judge’s decision late this week to deny a former Fannie Mae executive access to confidential evidence unearthed as part of the discovery process in an investors’ lawsuit against the government. Earlier this year, Fairholme Funds hired former Fannie Chief Financial Officer Timothy Howard as a consultant to assist its law firm Coopers and Kirk. Lawyers for the government want to deny Howard access to some 800,000 pieces of discovery in investors’ litigation challenging Uncle Sam’s “net-worth sweep” of GSE profits.

After a year of searching for a chief executive to lead Common Securitization Solutions, the Federal Housing Finance Agency is still looking, but it continues to hire staff. “The search continues,” said a government official close to the matter. “We even have a search firm.”Although the FHFA is keeping a tight lid on information regarding CSS, it’s now common knowledge that the search firm in question is the Washington-based Spencer Stuart, which bills itself as “one of the world’s leading global executive search and leadership consulting firms.”

The Federal Housing Finance Agency “should not appreciably change” guaranty fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to a new paper by Moody’s Analytics. The paper, “A General Theory of G-Fees,” by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, and Cristian deRitis, a senior director of consumer credit analytics, noted that the two GSEs are currently charging an average g-fee of approximately 60 basis points across all new loans they insure.

In a 2-to-1 decision earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that tossed out state-law claims brought against Fannie Mae by homeowners fighting foreclosure proceedings. Homeowners in Lightfoot et al v. Cedant Mortgage Corp. et al sued Fannie and others in California state court after foreclosure proceedings were initiated against their homes. The homeowners filed the state court action after their prior federal claims were dismissed in federal district court.

The Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is among a growing list of official government watchdog agencies authorized to employ armed investigators when ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse, according to a recent report. The report issued by the Congressional Research Service listed some three dozen IGs that possess law enforcement authority, which legally empowers them to make arrests, seek warrants and carry firearms.

IG Recommends FHFA Upgrade Its Recordkeeping. The Federal Housing Finance Agency is in compliance with its recordkeeping procedures but the policy and infrastructure of its records management could do with an upgrade, concluded an evaluation by FHFA’s Inspector General last week. The IG said that the Finance Agency’s Division of Enterprise Regulation’s recordkeeping practices “have limitations that impede the efficient retrieval” of examination workpapers by agency staff and by IG auditors.

New regulations in the mortgage industry have wreaked havoc on the business, with lenders facing higher compliance risk and growing compliance costs, according to Fannie Mae’s third quarter survey of mortgage lender sentiment. The results show that 72 percent of lenders reported that recent regulations, among them the qualified-mortgage rule and the risk-based capital rules for banks, have had a “significant” impact on their business. Only 22 percent reported “minimal” impact ...