The government is exploring ways to liquidate hundreds of billions, or trillions, of Fannie & Freddie portfolios. There are 15 F&F-related bills in the House, little interest in the Senate about doing anything soon, and the NAR and mortgage-related groups arrayed against House Republicans, who are now looking to peddle F&F’s assets.

Yesterday I summarized new Finreg rules requiring banks to retain at least 5% of loans they sell into secondary markets, and outlined which Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) loans will be exempt from this rule. The exemption debate rages, and here’s the Mortgage Bankers Association’s “profound concerns” on the matter. The QRM proposals are now open [...]

Strategic Defaults Today A recent Barclays report (via HousingWire) said: “Most popular studies overestimate the level of strategic mortgage defaults. We think that the strongest cases of active strategic defaults are less than 1% of total defaults. These borrowers are clearly capable of making mortgage payments, always remain current on all non-mortgage debts and actively [...]

Elizabeth Warren on Consumer Protection For some reason the mortgage industry already doesn’t seem to like presidential and Treasury advisor Elizabeth Warren, who’s also tasked with setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or Agency). Here’s the Treasury’s ’5 Questions’ interview with Warren, which is posted on ‘Treasury Notes’ the blog that Treasury announced [...]

Awaiting Irish Bailout Mortgage security prices ended Friday about where they started, worse by a few “ticks” (less than .125) on only $800 million of sales. So locks are way down, or everyone sold their pipeline already. Either way, if demand is steady or strong, and fewer mortgages result in less supply, look for mortgage [...]

2011 Mortgage Rate Outlook The Mortgage Bankers Association released their mortgage rate predictions yesterday. They expect rates on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage will average 4.4% in the fourth quarter of 2010, increasing to a 4.7% average in the first quarter of 2011, and climbing to 5.1% by the end of next year. Most late-2009, early-2010 [...]

The WSJ reports that the Obama administration will roll out an expanded program this week to help home owners whose home values are less than their mortgages (excerpts below). Banks that reduce loan balances will have more flexibility in refinancing existing loans into new FHA-insured loans. Hats off to the administration for trying to help, [...]

Guns & Mortgages This story speaks for itself, here’s the link and the epic lead paragraph below: Prosecutors: Mortgage Worker Got Drunk, Shot Computer Server

What Do Manufacturing & Inflation Stats Mean? Economic stats often point to different economic trends, depending on one’s viewpoint. What difference do numbers like Industrial Production, Capacity Utilization, Producer Price Index, etc., mean for anyone in the mortgage business? Aside from moving rates around, last week we saw strength in manufacturing production (pushing commodity prices [...]

Fannie Mae Relief For Homeowners Near Oil Spill CitiMortgage will suspend all foreclosure sales and filings for 90 days on its 1st mortgages within 25 miles of the Gulf coast. Fannie Mae said that servicers of Fannie-backed loans may immediately suspend or lower payments on mortgages for borrowers whose income or property were affected by [...]