Cash-out refinancings hit a 26-year low in the fourth quarter as 85% of borrowers maintained the same loan amount or reduced their principal balance after refinancing, according to a new report by Freddie Mac.

The Obama administration is working toward producing a plan to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner.

While the U.S. subinvestment-grade market, especially on the bond side, has seen a steady stream of European deals recently, one group of investors likely wouldn’t mind being shown a bit more love by these issuers and their underwriters: European CLO managers.

Ally Financial just can't escape its troubled mortgage unit, which dragged the company's fourth-quarter results into the red on Thursday.

In the past month, the Trepp CMBS delinquency rate has been hovering within a narrow band. For the last three months, the delinquency rate has shifted back and forth only slightly higher and lower. During this process, the rate has not gone over 9.60% or below 9.50%.

Fannie Mae did $24 billion of multi-family mortgages last year, of which 98% were put into MBS. The leading Delegated Underwriting and Servicing (DUS) program originator was Wells Fargo Bank.

With Bank of America shedding mortgage servicing rights en masse, and a handful of other megabanks writing down their MSRs because of Basel III, prepayments and other concerns, one might think that the asset must stink to high heaven. Well, think again.

One of the takeaways from the entire mortgage meltdown and the current brouhaha over Freddie Mac's obscure hedging techniques is this: If you can't explain something, you shouldn't be doing it.

Mortgage rates reversed course after last week's pop with new record lows reported for 30- and 15-year fixed and 5/1 hybrid ARMs, according to Freddie Mac's survey.

Recoveries against bad loans have become a major source of cash for credit card issuers, and hence an increasingly important factor in the industry’s return to pre-recession loss rates.

Redwood Trust filed a shelf offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue MBS that will be collateralized primarily by mortgage loans secured by first liens on one- to four-family residential properties.

Fannie Mae's issuance of MBS jumped 20% in December after a similar increase in November, according to new figures released by the mortgage giant.