Angel Oak’s Tom Hutchens: “If you don’t commit to it and dedicate some resources, you are going to be even more inefficient.”

Back in early June, the share price of Fannie/Freddie common was rallying, reaching $3.16 (for the former) and $3.07 for the latter. If you had bought in at those prices, today you’d be looking at losses of 23.1% and 24.7%, respectively.

In a new opinion piece, former Freddie CEO Don Layton argues against having multiple MBS guarantors, a position he’s taken in the past. Layton, who now bides his time at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, argues the barriers to entering the secondary guarantee business are high, “possibly even insurmountable.”

Chris George, CEO of CMG Financial and the current chairman of the MBA, provided an update on the effort this week at the California Mortgage Bankers Association’s western secondary market conference in San Francisco.

At press time, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury was at 2.13%, continuing its march northward. Is the rate rally over?

Keep in mind: A handful of senior officials who worked in the bureau’s supervision and enforcement division quit this year, including Assistant Director Christopher D’Angelo and Enforcement Director Kristen Donoghue...

The Trump White House is apparently worried about how GSE reform might screw up the mortgage market, especially around election time. Go figure...

The for-cause provision has been front and center in a case currently before the Fifth Circuit...

Meanwhile, whatever happened to all that chatter about Amazon.com buying loanDepot?

As of January 2019, Fannie employed 7,400 people compared with 7,200 a year earlier, according to 10-K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. There was no mention of the word “buyout” or “buyouts” in the SEC filing.