The Federal Housing Finance Agency issued guidance for the GSEs and Federal Home Loan Banks to establish independent internal audit (IA) functions. This is so they can relay timely information and make the appropriate corrections when it comes to elevated risks. The agency requires the boards of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHLBanks to have an audit committee and a chief audit executive (CAE) solely responsible for the IA function. The FHFA said that the CAE must establish internal audits that are independent and objective so that they effectively identify and assess risks. Internal audits should cover the entire audit universe over a maximum four-year period.

The supervision of examiners in the Division of Federal Home Loan Bank Regulation has been lax when it comes to making sure deficiencies within the FHLBanks are corrected, according to a recent Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of the Inspector General report. The IG reviewed a sample of nine matters requiring attention (MRA) that the division issued from January 2014 through December 2015. When it comes to correcting serious supervisory matters, the IG said that the bank regulator has been inconsistent in following FHFA requirements. For two of the MRAs, examiners determined that the affected FHLBank made no progress in remediating the deficiencies and reissued MRAs with the same exact terms.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has included more details regarding how it will monitor the examinations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in its annual performance plan for fiscal year 2017, released last week. Over the past year, the FHFA’s Office of Inspector General has blasted the regulator for not completing targeted examinations on time and inadequate follow-up on what were deemed matters requiring attention (MRAs). The new plan noted that the GSEs will continue to address MRAs by submitting remediation plans to FHFA for review. Each non-objected remediation plan will include a timeframe for completion within the fiscal year the MRA was issued or beyond. FHFA added that Fannie and Freddie management are responsible for...

A judge ruled that the city of Chicago cannot impose a real estate transfer tax on buyers who purchased homes sold by the GSEs. Even though federal law does not allow local governments to collect taxes to property held by federal lenders, the GSE accused the city of circumventing the law by waiting for properties to be sold then sending the buyers a tax bill. This ruling stems from a federal court case last October in which Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Finance Agency sued the city for trying to collect taxes from buyers who purchased foreclosed homes from the GSE.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency recently issued guidance on data management and usage and said it expects Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to have the appropriate policies, procedures and standards in place.The advisory bulletin noted that the architecture of the data should provide easy access and effective utilization across the GSE as appropriate. Each GSE should also establish data quality requirements so that data used for decision-making are relevant, accurate, complete, timely and consistent. Five different areas concerning data were highlighted in the bulletin. Under data governance, the FHFA said that the GSEs should each establish a data...

Reversing at least temporarily a long-running trend in the mortgage market, the four biggest banks in the U.S. expanded their presence in the GSE single-family market in the third quarter of 2016...

The traditional interpretation of Section 8 of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act that the mortgage industry has relied on for decades was vindicated this week when ...

A total of $12.41 billion of non-agency MBS were issued during the third quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis, but the market continued to ...

ICYMI: The brouhaha over the Wells Fargo phony account creation debacle took another turn this week, with CEO John Stump opting for early retirement...

Further empirical confirmation of a recovering mortgage market continued to accumulate at the CFPB during the third quarter, as related consumer complaints dropped 19.8 percent ...