Agency MBS accounted for 98 percent of credit union investments in mortgage securities, according to Inside MBS & ABS.

Roughly $495 billion of residential MBS and non-mortgage ABS were issued during the second quarter of 2013, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS market analysis.

The silver lining in the 2Q numbers is a strengthening home-purchase market. Fannie and Freddie securitized $81.7 billion of home-purchase mortgages during the second quarter, their highest quarterly volume since the second quarter of 2009.

Japanese investors increased their holdings of agency MBS by $32 billion and even boosted their non-agency MBS investments by $1.4 billion.

Mortgage bankers continue to talk about declining refi applications but purchase money firms remain mostly optimistic about their prospects.

The revised ranking for the first quarter shows that the top retail lender, Wells Fargo, produced $60.4 billion through this channel, or 12 percent of total originations for the period.

Freddie filed repurchase requests on some $361.6 million of 2012 originations during the first quarter of this year, according to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Trends.

Depositories sold $396 billion of single-family mortgages into the secondary market in the first quarter, down 5 percent from the previous period.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke indicated that the central bank is leaning toward scaling down its MBS purchases later this year, and that rapidly rising mortgage interest rates don’t pose a major threat to the fledgling housing recovery.

Residential debt outstanding fell slightly in the first quarter, but the GSE/FHA share of the market continued to grow.