Secondary

It’s been five years since Uncle Sam placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship and private investors all but abandoned the housing finance sector.

Webster First FCU Monday denied ownership of a mortgage once held by Saugus FCU, which it acquired last year and that is the target of a lawsuit seeking to halt foreclosure proceedings.

The head of Ginnie Mae said the agency is trying to “triage” its application problem after finding out that over the past year it could approve less than half of all applicants—and that several of those who received a green light have yet to issue any securities.

The housing finance system must be given back to the companies that make mortgages and the borrowers who use them to buy homes, keynote speakers said at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Secondary Market Conference.

An American Bankers Association-sponsored mortgage cooperative that sells loans to a select number of investors is looking for new partners.

A timeline Acting FHFA director Ed DeMarco provided to Congress in March targets September as the date for the first single-family risk-sharing deals. But the question boils down to this: What will Fannie and Freddie come up with and will it be profit-enticing enough for the private sector jump on board?

One has to be particularly careful to have the right mix of quality, technology and speed when it comes to managing valuations, contractor networks and FHA product in particular, according to three respective experts in these areas.

There may be a simple reason why Wells won’t buy mortgages from a certain lender.

Residential originations may have fallen by more than 10% last year, but don’t tell that to community banks that rely on Mortgage Solutions, a subsidiary of the American Bankers Association.

Ginnie Mae wants to provide more loan-level data to its MBS investors so they can determine if the underlying mortgages were originated through a mortgage broker or some other third-party channel.