Are settlement talks heating up between GSE shareholders and Uncle Sam? Hard to say, but at least the housing-finance train is on the move.

A panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling earlier this month, said a reseller of mortgages can demand that an originator repurchase defective loans, even though the contract between the two companies did not specify a timeframe within which the originator had to cure any defects. The decision reversed a lower court’s ruling.

In a class action lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, a group of institutional investors allege that several Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-approved dealers colluded in a systematic scheme to manipulate prices in the secondary market for agency debt.