The agency – which still doesn’t have a permanent president – issued $443.2 billion of MBS backed by forward single-family mortgages in 2017, a 10.8 percent decline from the previous year.

Non-agency mortgage-backed securities issuance had its best quarter of 2017 during the final three months of the year.

Purchase-money mortgages are the bread and butter in primary mortgage-insurance activity, but refinance loans also played a role in the continuing climb in private MI market share during the fourth quarter of 2017, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis.

Mortgage bankers saw a small decline in profitability during the third quarter of 2017 despite a favorable turn in servicing and a bump up in mortgage production, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s quarterly performance report.

Commercial banks and savings institutions reported another decline in the volume of home mortgages they repurchased from investors during the third quarter, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data.

The top five sellers to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac posted a combined 14.1 percent increase in volume from the third to the fourth quarter, boosting their share of the market to 38.4 percent.

Mortgage lenders seem somewhat cheerier about the new year than the dismal scientists…

Fact: Fannie and Freddie securitized more purchase-money mortgages in 2017 – $472.77 billion – than in any year since 2007.

An estimated 69.5 percent of third-quarter mortgage originations were funneled into securities, according to affiliated publication Inside MBS & ABS.

While combined GSE servicing still accounted for a hefty 44.9 percent of single-family mortgages, it has continued to drift lower over the course of 2017…