The mortgage market has gradually shifted upstream since the collapse of the housing market and the painstakingly slow recovery, with big-ticket mortgages capturing a growing share of new originations, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. Mortgages exceeding the traditional conventional loan limit of $417,000 accounted for 19.8 percent of new originations in 2013, up from 16.2 percent during the previous year. And with overall mortgage-production volume slumping over the second half of 2013, the jumbo share of new originations rose to 23.3 percent in the fourth quarter. The secondary-market agencies accounted...[Includes three data charts]

The private mortgage-insurance industry said it is pleased that the bipartisan agreement between Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Ranking Minority Member Michael Crapo, R-ID, on housing finance reform recognizes the important role of private MI. The newly launched U.S. Mortgage Insurers said it supports Congress’ efforts to achieve housing finance reform, all of which recognize the importance of and the need for standard MI coverage on loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Privately, MIs say...

The top Democrat and Republican of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week delivered their long-awaited mortgage reform bill which aims to put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of business within a half-decade window, but with a couple potential leases on the lives of the two government-sponsored enterprises. In a rare Sunday filing, the legislation authored by Senate Banking Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-ID, would set up a powerful new agency, the Federal Mortgage Insurance Corp., which could assume control of the GSEs within six months of enactment and begin writing new “catastrophic” mortgage-securities guaranties. Based on the bipartisan legislation introduced by Sens. Bob Corker, R-TN, and Mark Warner, D-VA last summer, the new bill adds...

Top Democrats on Capitol Hill are peeved that the Justice Department is not making the prosecution of mortgage lender and servicer abuses much of a priority, and they are pressing Attorney General Eric Holder for a meeting to discuss what to do about it. Their ire was raised by a recent report from the DOJ’s Inspector General that found, among other things, that the department had not prioritized the investigation of mortgage fraud and that it reported unreliable, inflated statistics about the scope of its prosecutorial efforts. In a letter to the DOJ, Reps. Elijah Cummings, D-MD, and Maxine Waters, D-CA, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, focused...

The House Financial Services Committee late last week passed bipartisan legislation that would provide an alternate way of defining “rural” for purposes of the CFPB’s qualified mortgage standard so a bank could make its case to the bureau as to why a jurisdiction should be fit into that category. H.R. 2672 would direct the CFPB to establish an application process under which a person who lives or does business in a state may apply to have an area designated as a rural area for the purpose of exempting certain loans from the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule if that area has not already been designated as such by the bureau.

Bipartisan legislation in the Senate to reform the government-sponsored enterprises would maintain the high-cost conforming loan limits, according to a summary of the draft bill released this week. The bill signals a shift as other GSE reform efforts in Congress have contemplated a gradual reduction of high-cost conforming loan limits. Leaders of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs announced this week that they reached an agreement on what will be included ...

More lenders have expressed concern about a provision in the proposed FY 2015 federal budget seeking congressional authority to collect $30 million to help improve and strengthen FHA quality assurance reviews. Under the president’s budget proposal, FHA would collect an “administrative fee” from FHA lenders to implement the quality assurance (QA) changes needed to provide a clearer, more transparent picture of enforcement going forward. The improvements are meant to provide lenders not only information about early payment default or other kinds of default characteristics through loan sampling but also an accurate snapshot of their “manufacturing risk,” which is the risk that a loan is not underwritten properly. “The purpose is for lenders to have the information six to nine months after they have originated the loan as opposed to ...

Penalties in legislation that would restrict the use of eminent domain to resolve foreclosure problems could cripple state and local governments financially and provide no relief to property owners, warned the bill’s critics. H.R. 1944, the Private Rights Protection Act, would prohibit city and county governments that get federal funding for economic development from using their eminent domain powers to seize underwater mortgage notes from investors and unilaterally restructure the loans before selling them to other investors. Violators would be ineligible for federal economic development funds for two fiscal years following a court’s finding of guilt. The bill also provides the attorney general with broader enforcement authority. The necessity for legislation arose in the wake of efforts last year by certain municipalities in California to ...

The Democrat and Republican heads of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week finally announced an agreement on comprehensive housing finance reform legislation but the release of a detailed bill for public consumption remains forthcoming. For now, it’s impossible to tell how the agreement reached by Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-ID, is any different than the bipartisan bill introduced early last year by Sens. Bob Corker, R-TN, and Mark Warner, D-VA. Johnson and Crapo are expected to release draft legislative language later this week, and move to a markup “in the coming weeks.” Like Corker-Warner, the Johnson-Crapo agreement includes...

Although investors and participants initially showed a great deal of interest in the fledgling market for bonds backed by single-family rental properties, rating agencies are starting to take a closer look at the business and don’t like everything they see. “Rising U.S. home prices have pushed down rental yields in many single-family rental markets, a trend that will likely discourage some institutional investors from buying distressed properties and converting them into rental units,” according to a recent report from Moody’s Investor Service. The rating agency adds...