Slip, sliding away: commercial banks and loans-serviced-for others...

It's that time of the season: MBS issuance was down 30.6 percent at Fannie and off 17.4 percent at Freddie.

During the worst of the buyback storm in late 2012 and early 2013, the GSEs reported over $18.51 billion of unresolved repurchase requests and as much as $13.22 billion in buybacks during a single quarter.

The refinance market was soft as well. The agencies securitized $37.48 billion of refinance loans during November, down 12.3 percent from the previous month.

At the same time, credit standards – at least in the agency market – have eased only slightly over the past two years...

In percentage terms, the sharpest downturn was in home-equity ABS, although this sector represented just 1.6 percent of bank ABS investment and there has been no new production in years.

Stearns Lending was the top table funder in 3Q15 with $2.95 billion originated through loan brokers. United Wholesale Mortgage was an extremely close second at $2.94 billion.

Despite changes to GSE to representations-and-warranties policies, lenders are still avoiding the riskiest segments of the market.

Unless mortgage-banking income takes another steep downturn in the fourth quarter, 2015 will likely prove more profitable than 2014 by a slim margin.

Bank of America grew its MBS holdings by a stunning 22.7 percent in the third quarter, according to Inside MBS & ABS.