Michael Stegman, a counselor to the Treasury on housing finance policy, said the exercise aims to solve the “chicken-and-egg” issue that some see as holding back non-agency MBS activity.

Two Harbors is a member of the FHLB system via a captive insurance affiliate. The Federal Housing Finance Agency is contemplating snuffing out this avenue of membership...

Two Harbors, a REIT, has been aggregating, on average, $300 million of jumbo mortgages per month.

The Mortgage Choice Act was passed by the GOP-held House in June, but failed to move through the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Prospect Mortgage is the top contributor with a 9.1 percent share, followed by Ditech Mortgage (8.6 percent) and Skyline Financial (7.1 percent). All three are nonbanks.

The firm noted that employment and income fraud peaked in the fourth quarter of 2013 and has declined ever since.

Any monkeying with the GSE charters must get past two of the most powerful lobbying groups in all of housing finance...

Roughly 73 percent of the mortgages in the deal have interest-only terms.

An official involved in the non-agency MBS market said it’s easier to sell private placements than it is to meet requirements for publicly registered deals

More commonly, servicer event of default clauses are tied to the servicer’s financial condition...