After the government stalled on a September ruling to turn over close to 60 documents regarding the GSEs’ net worth sweep, a judge rejected its appeal. The court ordered the government to disclose the bulk of the documents to the plaintiff’s attorneys in Fairholme Funds Inc. v. United States. The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac investors, upholding Judge Margaret Sweeney’s earlier decision. The government is to release all…
FHFA PLS Actions Update. The Federal Housing Finance Agency published an update on litigation it initiated against 18 financial institutions for securities law violations and fraud regarding private-label securities sales. Seventeen cases were settled in 2013 and 2014. JP Morgan Chase settled for $4 billion, Deutsche Bank settled for $1.9 billion and Goldman Sachs for $1.2 billion. A case against the Royal Bank of Scotland remains. The settlement money ultimately goes to the Treasury through the dividend sweeps. Fannie Exec Tapped for CFPB? Brian Books, Fannie Mae’s general counsel, is being considered by the White House to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to a...
Fannie Mae’s recent dip into testing the single-family rental market in an agreement to fund up to $1 billion of collateral owned by Invitation Homes has caught the industry’s attention, and not necessarily in a good way. This is the first time the GSE has financed a large institutional single-family rental home investor. The Dallas-based company is a subsidiary of The Blackstone Group and has about 50,000 homes in its portfolio that it acquired from foreclosure auctions. However, some are now accusing Fannie of mission creep. The National Community Stabilization Trust President Robert Grossinger said, “I am perplexed to see Fannie Mae place a taxpayer guarantee behind the same private interests whose risky practices led to...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week extended the deadline for public input on a potential chattel-loan pilot to support manufactured housing. The reactions so far to the manufactured home portion of the final duty-to-serve rule, which included a request for input on chattel lending, have been mixed. In December, the FHFA gave the green light for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to begin pilot programs for the loans. Since then, the agency issued the RFI and extended the original deadline of Feb. 17 to March 21, 2017. The FHFA also hosted several listening sessions on the topic to get input. During the first session in Chicago, one organization called the FHFA’s DTS rule on manufactured home lending “intolerable.”
Fannie Mae’s new regional headquarters under construction in the Dallas metro area is the target of criticism from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA.He questions the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s management of the project in which the GSE is combining three locations into the one leased building. This comes on the heels of the FHFA Office of the Inspector General issuing a management alert late last year raising concerns about the cost of the consolidation and relocation of Fannie’s high-rise offices in Plano, TX. Grassley wants answers as to how the agency plans to address the issues identified in the IG management alert.
RSS