Since Mel Watt was sworn into a five-year term as Federal Housing Finance Agency director on January 6, the former North Carolina Congressman has made no public appearances or policy statements except for canned comments attributed to him in routine FHFA press releases.
Still, purchase-mortgage originations fell sharply in the fourth quarter, dropping almost 23 percent from the previous period, according to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance.
January 2014 marked the fourth month in a row where combined agency securitization included more purchase-money mortgages than refinances, according to Inside MBS & ABS.
Inside Mortgage Finance makes it official: residential originations tanked in the fourth quarter, but certain nonbanks gained at the expense of the largest players.
Through the first nine months of 2013, commercial banks sold $1.077 trillion of home mortgages, according to call-report data compiled by Inside Mortgage Trends.
In fact, 10 of the 17 banks tracked by Inside Mortgage Trends posted increased mortgage-banking income during the final three months of 2013, and all of them reported a positive showing.
The market produced $4.94 billion of new non-agency MBS during the fourth quarter, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking, the weakest output of the year.
A key factor in the upswing in private MI share of Fannie/Freddie business was the relatively steadier volume in purchase-mortgage securitization compared to refinance loans.
Refinance mortgages accounted for 80.1 percent of agency production back in 2012, but that declined to 65.6 percent last year and just 45.3 percent of fourth-quarter business.