Fun fact: February has the fewest number of business days in the year and typically represents the low spot in seasonal housing activity. 

For the full year, expanded-credit lending was off 28.7% to an estimated $37.3 billion. The reason: Liquidity problems sparked by the pandemic.

Mortgage analysts have the right to ask: Where have all the depositories gone?

The record $114.44 billion total for Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie represented a 33.7% gain from the third quarter.

The lender's gain-on-sale margin slipped to 176 basis points in the most recent quarter compared to 278 bps in the prior period...

In 4Q20, Chase and Popular returned to more normal levels while repurchases at Wells remained somewhat elevated...

The great irony: As federally insured banks continued to lose residential lending market share to the Quickens and the Freedom Mortgages of the world, their investment banking units benefitted by arming the competition.

Over the past three quarters, several Ginnie issuer/servicers have turned a nice profit by purchasing delinquent FHA (and to a lesser degree VA) mortgages out of MBS pools, rehabilitating the notes and then repooling them.

The irony: As banks trimmed their holdings, mortgage servicing rights increased in value...

According to FHFA’s own performance and accountability reports, the number of employees at the agency grew from 609 in 2019 to 635 in 2020. More tellingly, FHFA has budgeted for an additional 113 employees in 2021.