The agency share of mortgage originations is expected to remain elevated for years to come due to profits at the government-sponsored enterprises, increasing home prices, a lack of non-agency production, and the new ability-to-repay rule, according to industry participants. The factors have combined to reduce the push for the Obama administration and Congress to take action on GSE reform. The most recent impediment to GSE reform appears to be new profits reported by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with expected profitable quarters going forward due to repurchase settlements, home price appreciation and other positive trends. “The Treasury Department has...

Mortgage lenders seeking new agency approvals from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae have to take a number and wait. And sometimes that wait can last for a year or more, even longer depending on which “agency” a company is dealing with. But all that appears to be changing, according to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance over the past two weeks. Unfortunately, there’s little in the way of hard numbers to back that up, except for Ginnie Mae. According to an agency spokesman, Ginnie approved...

Underwater homeowners who have remained current on their payments and who can demonstrate a “hardship” may be eligible to relinquish their homes, cancel their mortgage debt and avoid the messy foreclosure process under the terms of a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policy change to take effect in March. The two government-sponsored enterprises will broaden the authority of their servicers to approve a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure to non-delinquent Fannie or Freddie borrowers who can no longer afford to stay in the home. Effective March 1, the new deed-in-lieu option is...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2012 combined for the third biggest year ever in single-family mortgage-backed securities issuance, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance market analysis and ranking.

The federal judge in charge of overseeing multiple lawsuits filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency against non-agency mortgage-backed securities issuers for misrepresenting deals that were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rebuffed yet another motion by one of the banks to shut down the legal action.

In a few weeks the White House will release its new budget and there’s increasing speculation that it will ask for $3 billion to $5 billion for the beleaguered FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund…

Citigroup has joined the club of megabanks marking up the asset value of their mortgage servicing rights. Shares of Genworth spiked, and other mortgage news briefs.

Fannie Mae is ending the practice of assigning different guaranty-fee discounts to the various “affinity groups” or cooperatives that pool mortgages for sale into the secondary market, Inside Mortgage Finance has learned.

Remember the 4.4 million delinquent mortgagors who were done wrong by the nation’s mega-servicers and lost their homes to foreclosure? Remember how the Comptroller of the Currency launched a program in 2011 to let these mortgagors appeal? Well, apparently...