Secondary markets

Freddie Mac is planning its fifth risk-sharing transaction of the year.

RealtyMogul.com said it reached agreements for a total of $250 million in capital, which it will use to offer new products.

Radian Group in Philadelphia began a sale of $300 million in senior notes.

Community West Bancshares in Goleta, Calif., said that a litigation settlement concerning its sale of residential-mortgage loans will reduce its second-quarter profit.

Transactions involving residential mortgage-backed securities should include a manager to improve accountability, Fitch Ratings has recommended.

Life insurers increased their rate of investment in mortgages in 2014, according to a Fitch Ratings report.

Private mortgage insurers see deeper coverage of GSE loans as a way to expand business, while lenders hope it could lead to a reduction to guarantee fees.

Redwood Trust's latest residential mortgage securitization, Sequoia Mortgage Trust 2015-3, is backed by a slightly larger percentage of loans that fall outside of new ability-to-repay rules.

Mortgage rates jumped to an eight-month high, making home purchases costlier as investors prepare for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.

New York's highest court may have shut the door to many future lawsuits over flawed mortgage bonds, ruling investors have six years from the day the deal closed to pursue remedies.

A bipartisan group of Senate Banking Committee members is urging the Federal Housing Finance Agency to make risk-sharing a higher priority for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Fannie and Freddie should offer upfront risk-sharing options in order to give lenders an opportunity to lower their guarantee fees while encouraging more private capital and competition to flow into the secondary mortgage market.

The New York City Housing Development Corp. board approved a $680 million inaugural sustainable neighborhood bond transaction, expected to price next week.

Invitation Homes, a subsidiary of Blackstone Group, is back with its third single-family rental securitization of the year.

Small banks and nonbank lenders are originating commercial mortgages with lower credit quality than the loans originated by large banks, according to a Fitch Ratings report.

The nationwide gain in income has fed Americans' optimism about housing, which could lead to a more active housing market this year, Fannie Mae said in a new report.

How interested banks, REITs and other investors will be in replacing the Federal Reserve as buyers of mortgage-backed securities insured by government-related entities depends on a wide range of regulatory and economic factors.

Securities issuers are increasingly worried that risk-retention requirements could hinder efforts to broaden the types of loans securitized through the private-label market as implementation for the new regulation nears.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is in talks to pay $2 billion to $3 billion to settle a probe into its sales of mortgage bonds leading up to the financial crisis, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.

Freddie Mac's weekly survey of the primary mortgage market found average interest rates for conforming loan products to be fairly stable.