Fannie Mae introduced a program this month to boost manufactured home ownership by giving manufactured housing properties the same advantages as site-built homes. Manufactured housing under the MH Advantage initiative is designed to meet specific construction, architectural and energy efficiency standards that are more in line with site-built homes.Fannie explained that the specific architectural and aesthetic features include a higher pitch roofline, lower profile foundation, garages or carports and dormers. The MH should also be built with more durable siding materials and energy efficiency standards. One of the goals is to encourage more consumers to consider manufactured homes and help bridge the gap in affordable housing.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently updated their servicing guides with a new consolidated forbearance plan to help servicers assist struggling borrowers. There will now be one single policy for forbearance plans. Fannie noted that the goal was to make it easier for servicers to assist borrowers who are experiencing a short-term hardship and to simplify servicing by making it more efficient. The plan covers challenges related to unemployment, unique hardships, military service, and disaster events. This also helps simplify the GSEs’ policies on disaster assistance. Under the new requirements, the servicer may approve forbearance plans that last up to six months and may offer consecutive forbearance plans of up to 12 total months without requiring a Borrower Response Package.

Fitch Accepts GSE Valuation Tools in New RMBS Criteria. Fitch Ratings updated its residential mortgage-backed securities criteria to allow Fannie Mae’s Collateral Underwriter and Freddie Mac’s Loan Collateral Advisor to be used as third-party support of original appraisal in U.S. RMBS transactions. This allows for use of CU or LCA in support of appraisals for conforming and non-conforming loans that are less than two years old and are secured by one-unit single-family properties. FHFA’s Fifth NPL Sales Report. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sold 90,921 nonperforming loans with a total unpaid principal balance of $17.4 billion through Dec. 31, 2017, according to the most recent NPL sales report. NPLs sold had average...

The Trump administration late this week published its thoughts on ending the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, aiming to reduce their role in the housing-finance market – while providing an explicit U.S. guarantee on conventional MBS.

MBS guarantee fees currently charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are at levels sufficient to meet capital requirements recently proposed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to industry analysts. The proposal could also bring attention to cross-subsidization in g-fee pricing, especially under a new FHFA director.

Ginnie Mae will be ramping up its efforts over the next three years to ensure issuer liquidity by expanding the supply of stable capital to support mortgage servicing rights and to strengthen oversight of counterparty risk.

A healthy share of new primary market mortgage originations were delivered into mortgage securities during the first quarter of 2018, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals, although Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac appeared to be losing some share. [Includes one data chart.]

As the Federal Reserve slowly unwinds its agency MBS holdings, economists forecast there are more disposals to come and without much market disruption.

A switch from the London Inter-bank Offered Rate to a different reference rate won’t have a major impact on the commercial MBS market, according to analysts at Morningstar Credit Ratings.

Defaults remain low on student loan refinancing originated by online lenders due to the overall high quality of their borrowers, and some new repayment assistance programs will help the strong performance, said Moody’s Investors Service.