Comments made Wednesday by the Treasury Department’s point man on GSE reform, Michael Stegman, did not go unnoticed by employees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Hoping to jump start the non-agency MBS market, the Structured Finance Industry Group plans to establish a limited number of options on various rep and warrant issues.

In terms of market effect, a DocuTech executive said that because of the new CFPB rules, "credit is going to slow down for a little while, maybe a month or so."

One servicing advisor told IMFnews that the regulator “now has the last word on all MSR transfer approvals. It began in December and has slowed the process a bit.”

The hunger for GSE speculation is also causing some investors to buy Fannie/Freddie common which has been rising of late, but not by much. However, one GSE watcher believes that buying the common, "is a fool’s game."

In other words, the White House still wants to dismantle Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and doesn't seem to care about all the money the two are returning to the government.

The change resulted in the cessation of dividend payments by the GSEs to Treasury, replacing it with a “sweep” of all almost net profits earned by Fannie and Freddie.

Moody’s notes that all three have grown their production operations – a positive – but question whether over the long term whether they can compete with banks in the “prime” market.

With the mortgage industry having failed to delay implementation of the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule/qualified mortgage standard, industry representatives have shifted gears and are now pressing for numerous alterations to the bureau’s controversial rule, which took effect Jan. 10. During a hearing last week before the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, the Mortgage Bankers Association had a number of recommendations, including abandoning the “rebuttable presumption” level of legal...

It’s too early to say how the January effective dates for a handful of game-changing rules from the CFPB are going to affect mortgage lenders and servicers. The real test will be what happens when the CFPB shows up at the door and wants to sit down and have a look around. The short-term implications of the bureau’s new rules likely won’t be any big deal, according to Scott Stucky, chief operating officer of DocuTech Corp., a provider of compliance and document technology...