It’s far from over, but the years-old plague of mortgage buybacks may be slowly winding down. A new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of bank call reports reveals that banks and thrifts repurchased “only” $2.97 billion during the fourth quarter of 2012. That was down 2.1 percent from the third quarter, but it marked the fifth straight quarterly decline and it was the lowest level since the second quarter of 2009. It brought total repurchases on single-family mortgages, which include indemnifications, to $13.97 billion for all of 2012, a decline of 33.3 percent from the previous year. It was the lowest annual repurchase volume since 2008. An earlier Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of repurchase disclosures made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac showed...