Refinancing continued to account for most new business at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae in 2021, and the biggest gain was in purchase-mortgage activity. (Includes two data charts.)

Time to celebrate: Annual agency MBS issuance rose 10.1% from 2020 to a record $3.471 trillion in 2021.

A significant factor was the entry of Western Alliance Bank into mortgage banking after its acquisition of nonbank AmeriHome Mortgage...

Plenty of nonbanks have announced stock buyback programs over the past year...

Moody’s Investors Service posted a hefty 47.7% increase in non-agency MBS ratings to $20.87 billion, tops in the market for the third quarter.

Meanwhile, wholesale lending posted a hefty 46.4% increase in the jumbo market, though it still accounted for just 9.2% of that segment...

As of September, 2021 already represented the highest annual buyback total — which includes indemnifications as well as repurchases — since 2014.

In the first nine months of 2021, GSE sellers have repurchased $2.1 billion of defective loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, more than in any year since 2014. Soaring new MBS issuance is the reason.

Retail lending by depository institutions' mortgage-banking operations fell in the third quarter, but a major acquisition by one bank pushed other indicators higher.

Detailed survey data show mortgage lenders leaned more heavily on wholesale-broker and correspondent production in the third quarter of 2021, particularly in the red-hot jumbo market.