Secondary markets

Additional mortgage-backed securities purchases by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will address private investor skittishness about the asset class, but it will not necessarily lower rates.

Not so long after Treasury bond yields experienced an unprecedented drop, the average 30-year mortgage rate rose, reflecting volatility related to the coronavirus as well as capacity issues on multiple levels.

Terry Wakefield, a technology consultant who helped launch Fannie Mae's mortgage-backed securities business and form Prudential Home Mortgage, has died. He was 70.

Loan limits for most mortgages Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy will exceed $500,000 for the first time ever next year, and the maximum for most high-cost areas will be $765,000.

From product-specific variations in refinancing rates to pockets of depreciation in an otherwise healthy market, here are some details in housing-related data that highlight important underlying trends in the mortgage business.

The former head of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight explains why he thinks the mortgage industry is closer than ever to having a truly paperless process, and weighs in on GSE reform.

The dollar volume of mortgages guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs rose nearly 9% in the past fiscal year as interest-rate reduction refinancing loans surged nearly 75%.

An increase in credit risk transfer activity since 2015 signifies a sea change for private mortgage insurers that may be about to intensify, according to an industry trade group.

When it comes to possible new competitors in the secondary market, the heads of the two current outlets more than welcomed the possibility of additional players in their space because of housing finance reform.

Ginnie Mae is looking for input on its proposed guidelines for electronic promissory notes and other mortgage documents that it plans to test through a digital collateral pilot.

The end of the qualified mortgage patch should further accelerate non-QM origination growth, but is the mortgage industry ready?

President Trump has signed the Protecting Affordable Mortgages for Veterans Act, which aims to address concerns that rules around certain VA refinances were impeding those loans' inclusion in secondary market pools.

After the government-sponsored enterprise patch expires, "near prime" loans over the 43% debt-to-income ratio should be qualified mortgages if they have compensating factors, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

As officials prepare plans for the government-sponsored enterprises' exit from conservatorship, there's no shortage of speculation about what those plans might look like and how they might affect the mortgage industry.

The nonconforming market is ready to absorb most of the government-sponsored enterprise loans covered by the QM patch, but not all of them, according Redwood Trust.

Prepayments tied to repeated VA loan refinancing activity have had an adverse effect on Ginnie’s mortgage securities that persists despite countermeasures. The government bond issuer is making new plans to address the impact.

With prospects for government-sponsored enterprise reform improving, players in the private residential mortgage-backed securities market are starting to think about how they could better compete against the GSEs while awaiting change.

Investors can now exchange certain existing Freddie Mac bonds for to-be-announced uniform mortgage-backed securities in preparation for the full launch of UMBS next month.

Freddie Mac exchanged existing bonds from its portfolio for mirror certificates for the first time, completing a key test that is central to the creation of a uniform mortgage-backed security.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, by allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to split the CEO and president positions, let the companies dodge a congressionally mandated cap on executive salaries, the regulator's inspector general said.