GSEs

Mortgage applications leapt 9% on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending Jan. 15 compared to one week earlier, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Agency and government loan programs will be a little different in the next 12 months. There also will be new rules for private-label securitizations, along with new products available to investors. Here is an overview.

Interest rates on fixed-rate mortgages fell further this week due to overseas turmoil, according to Freddie Mac.

Spreads widened on Freddie Mac's latest offering of Structured Agency Credit Risk securities as investors demanded additional compensation for taking on the credit risk of mortgages insured by the company.

The Federal Reserve's interest rate increase has commercial real estate debt and equity financing players even more upbeat about their prospects in 2016.

Consumers became more encouraged by the housing market in December, as they reflected on their higher wages compared to a year earlier, Fannie Mae said.

Forget bigger is better. Several private-equity-backed lenders are making loans to small landlords, who represent the biggest chunk of the home-rental market and get less help from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than they once did.

Mortgage rates rang in the new year by keeping below 4%, according to the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey.

Freddie Mac has formed a partnership with the Lenders One Mortgage co-operative to give its members benefits on pricing and in other areas.

Fannie Mae said that those affected by floods across the Midwest may have access to mortgage assistance.

The demand for affordable rental properties has long outstripped the supply, with the gap widening as incomes have stagnated, homeownership rates have fallen and rents have soared in recent years. But now, banks are finding a profitable path to helping ease this severe national shortage.

As the mortgage industry begins the New Year, National Mortgage News takes a look at the biggest trends and topics that will shape 2016.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is important, but it barely scratches the surface of former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael Oxley's impact on banking.

Freddie Mac's Multi-Indicator Market Index in October signaled ever-stabilizing circumstances across a growing number of regions.

Radian Guaranty Inc. is in compliance with the government-sponsored enterprises capital standards after receiving $325 million in cash and securities from parent company Radian Group Inc.

A proposal issued two weeks ago by the FHFA calls on the two government-sponsored enterprises to identify opportunities to increase their purchases of small multifamily properties in rural areas, sparking some concern among lenders.

After lenders and their technology providers spent much of 2015 implementing the TILA-RESPA integrated disclosures, forthcoming compliance audits and a government-sponsored enterprise plan to start collecting data from the new forms will tell if those efforts truly paid off.

Interest rates on fixed-rate mortgages remained largely unchanged this week, according to Freddie Mac.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are telling lenders that they are willing to retain loans with defects if they believe the defects are minor and can be fixed. But Freddie is one-upping Fannie by offering to retain such loans without charging lenders a fee.

Arch Mortgage Insurance introduced a new pricing program to better aligns a policy's risk with the amount of the premium. But analysts have expressed concerns about pricing competition.