Secondary

Delinquencies on mortgages controlled by Freddie Mac rose to 3.58% in December, the highest reading in nine months for the GSE, and a sign that it likely will continue to post operating losses in the immediate quarters ahead.

President Obama's decision to create a new task force to investigate risky lending and securitization practices leading up to the financial crisis could complicate and delay a potential $25 billion settlement involving foreclosure and servicing abuses.

GNMA chief Ted Tozer has been trying in vain to get more mortgage firms to issue MBS, but Wells Fargo & Co. continues to increase its grip on the government market.

Citigroup recently told its mortgage correspondents that going forward it will only buy "low risk" loans. What's a low risk loan, you ask? Answer: any mortgage that has an almost zero chance of going south.

Former Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd, who was named last month in a mortgage-related SEC fraud suit, has officially resigned from publicly traded investment manager Fortress Investment Group and its board, ending a leave of absence.

Mortgage loan application volume declined by 5% on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ended Jan. 20, as interest rates on some fixed-rate loans rebounded from their all-time lows, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The results for the current survey include an adjustment to account for the Martin Luther King Day holiday.

Fannie Mae's final multifamily issuance numbers for 2011 are in and they reflect a 50% increase from the previous year, according to an executive at the government-sponsored enterprise.

The debate over the definition of the qualified residential mortgage slated for use in determining regulatory risk retention standards boils down to two key questions, John Walsh, the acting Comptroller of the Currency, said in a speech at the American Securitization Forum's conference in Las Vegas.

MountainView Servicing Group, Denver, is brokering a $129 million package of servicing rights guaranteed by the Government National Mortgage Association.

Recently we heard that the FDIC unloaded a $900 million pool of nonperforming and troubled notes, but the agency failed to release a press release on the deal. (It was a structured finance transaction.) In November 2010 the FDIC sold a $23 billion package of MSRs tied to the failed AmTrust Bank. No press release was issued on that deal either.