The board authorized by Congress to establish appraisal standards will reduce the minimum criteria for a person to become a licensed residential appraiser. The decision stemmed from concerns about appraiser shortages and disagreements among industry participants on how to address the issue.
WMIH Corp., a shell company whose chief asset is tax losses, this week agreed to purchase Nationstar Mortgage for roughly $1.68 billion in cash and stock.
Mortgage delinquencies overall increased at the end of the year, with the poor performance largely attributed to areas hit by hurricanes in August and September. Mortgage performance in most of the rest of the country actually improved at the end of 2017.
With the legislative calendar growing shorter and Democrats avoiding saying anything positive about the GOP draft legislation on housing-finance reform, many in the industry are worrying more about what might happen to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when Mel Watt leaves his post as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Prior to release of 4Q17 results, the GSEs had an “account balance” of $103.0 billion with Uncle Sam: $291.4 billion of dividends paid to Treasury versus $188.4 billion of assistance received.
All totaled, the new tax law will result in Treasury – which owns the senior preferred stock of the GSEs – forking over $4.01 billion to aid Fannie and Freddie...