Compared to a year ago, bank mortgage servicing for others – nearly all of which is connected to MBS – was down 6.1 percent.

Though down from April, it was still significantly higher than at any time in 2014, when production averaged just $77.46 billion per month.

In fact, 2014 was the first year since 2006 that purchase mortgages accounted for more than half of total residential originations.

Meanwhile, the pipeline of issuer applications has dropped dramatically at Ginnie Mae...

The biggest rate of decline was in home-equity securitizations, where there has been no new issuance for several years.

Mortgage brokers facilitated an estimated $39.0 billion of home mortgages during the first three months of 2015...

The former analyst said Freddie has “an inferior security [MBS] necessitating the need for a lot of time and expense to create a common securitization platform…”

Texas and Florida, the second- and third-largest sources of GSE business, both saw solid gains from a year ago...

A big part of the MBS liquidity issue is caused by the Fed’s massive holdings, said Steve Abrahams, a managing director at Deutsche Bank.

Although only 13 banks reported net losses on mortgage banking during 1Q – compared to 756 institutions with net profits – several of the top players earned less than they did in the fourth quarter.