The Federal Home Loan Bank System increased its earnings by 6 percent in the fourth quarter and saw an 18.7 percent increase for all of 2016. Earnings rose in the last three months of the year to $913 million, from $861 million in the third quarter, rounding out the year with a net income total of $3.408 billion. The FHLBank Office of Finance noted that the quarterly net income increase was primarily due to higher gains on derivatives and hedging activities. Moreover, higher gains on litigation settlements helped grow both the quarterly and yearly increase. Additionally, the yearly earnings growth was due to gains on trading securities, partially offset by lower gains on derivatives and hedging activities, said the OF.
The once dormant market for MBS backed by newly originated nonprime loans is beginning to pick up steam, with deals unveiled by affiliates of Angel Oak Home Loans and Galton Funding. But that’s not all. According to industry officials who work in the sector, Citadel Servicing Corp., Irvine, CA, is planning a rated security for some time in May and there’s even talk that bond investing giant PIMCO might get in on the action. Origination and investment banking sources, speaking under the condition of anonymity, told...
Freddie’s First NPL Sale of 2017. Freddie Mac announced its first nonperforming loan sale of the year last week, a $759 million auction of seasoned non-performing residential whole loans. The NPLs are currently serviced by Nationstar Mortgage LLC and Specialized Loan Servicing LLC. This is also Freddie Mac’s second multi-servicer NPL transaction. The NPLs are being marketed via five pools: four Standard Pool Offerings and one Extended Timeline Pool Offering, which targets participation by smaller investors, including non-profits and minority and women-owned businesses. HARP Refi Volume Slow in 4Q. The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that 13,220 borrowers refinanced their mortgages through the Home Affordable Refinance Program...
A structural change in Freddie Mac’s popular Structured Agency Credit Risk transfer program gives Freddie less credit protection at higher loss levels, according to an analysis of the GSE’s first STACR deal of the year. So far, this year, Freddie has priced STACR Series 2017-DNA1 on Jan. 31 and STACR Series 2017-HQA1 on Feb. 14. The first deal of the year was an $802 million STACR debt notes offering referencing mortgages with low loan-to-value ratios ranging from 60 to 80 percent. This particular deal has a reference pool of single-family mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of about $33.9 billion.
Former Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Ed DeMarco continues to push his housing finance reform proposal leaning toward a Ginnie Mae model that would convert the GSEs into companies mutually owned by mortgage lenders. DeMarco, while speaking at a secondary market symposium in Florida earlier this month sponsored by Keefe Bruyette and Woods, said the proposal calls for risk sharing using private capital to meaningfully increase capital present at the mortgage-backed securities level. KBW called the plan “promising” because it’s proposing changes that are incremental as opposed to proposing a completely new structure for the mortgage market. “We think the mortgage insurers and mortgage real estate investment trusts are well...
Several more documents were released in relation to an ongoing GSE shareholder case out to prove that the government knew Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were on the path to profitability at the time the Treasury sweep was put in place.The release came after a judge rejected the government’s appeal of an earlier ruling requiring it to turn over a slew of documents for which it had asserted various forms of privilege in Fairholme Funds vs. United States, et al. All of the latest documents are from 2012. They include a July 20, 2012, memo stating “thoughts on how to signal a plan to amend the preferred stock purchase agreements,” from Treasury...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency is reviewing individual members of the Federal Home Loan Banks to help gauge their level of support to the community as part of their membership requirement. This includes making sure those banks are lending to first-time homebuyers.Every two years the FHFA reviews FHLBank members and invites the public to comment on how they help support their communities. Nonprofit housing developers, along with community and advocacy groups, are asked to submit comments to the FHFA by March 31.In order to maintain access to long-term advances, the banks must meet the community support requirements and criteria established by the FHFA.This means that the FHFA will examine the...
Skepticism over Fannie Mae’s foray into the single-family rental market has been growing and some lawmakers are voicing their concern. Since announcing the $1 billion deal with Invitation Homes in January, trade groups have expressed anger over Fannie’s pilot program with the Blackstone Group subsidiary, even as Freddie Mac may be next to test the SFR waters. On Feb. 17, 10 Democratic Congressmen sent a letter to Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt, asking him to reconsider the deal since it hasn’t been finalized yet. The pilot program is the first time that Fannie backed a large institutional investor. Invitation is the largest single-family rental operator in the U.S. and has a portfolio of about 50,000 homes that it acquires from foreclosures.
A prolonged conservatorship coupled with a change in leadership at the Federal Housing Finance Agency could shift priorities for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO said a potential priority change for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would only send mixed messages, creating uncertainties for market participants and hindering the development of the broader secondary mortgage market. In its 2017 biennial report released this month, the GAO discussed actions that need to be taken in order to resolve the federal role in housing finance. The need for leadership commitment by Congress and the administration to reform the system was one of the primary themes.
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