The Federal Housing Finance Agency is looking for ways to expand the credit-risk transfer programs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but showing little interest in a proposal being pushed by the Mortgage Bankers Association and private mortgage insurers. The regulator of the two government-sponsored enterprises recently issued a request for comment on front-end risk sharing without directly discussing the concept of sellers getting reduced guaranty fees for loans that have more than the required level of private MI coverage. It did, however, cite counterparty risk as one of the key issues in credit-risk transfers. As of Dec. 31, 2015, the GSEs had transferred...
Warehouse lenders that supply credit to nonbank originators have seen usage rates and new line requests increase significantly in the past few weeks, thanks in part to plunging interest rates brought about by the “Brexit” vote. David Frase, president of warehouse lending for Southwest Bank, said, “Any warehouse bank that isn’t seeing record volume is probably malfunctioning in some way. We’ve been pretty darn busy.” Other warehouse managers have reported...
Some lenders are generating extra revenue by providing a valuable service to real estate agents: providing leads on potential homebuyers. Real estate agents report mixed feelings about the services offered by Quicken Loans and others, according to a recent survey conducted by Campbell Surveys and sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance. Interactions between lenders and real estate agents typically relate to homebuyer referrals by agents to lenders. However, some lenders also sell homebuyer leads to real estate agents. “There is...
Over the past year, mortgage lenders have been clamoring for pricing breaks from the government-sponsored enterprises as well as the FHA, but so far nothing has changed. But is the industry’s luck about to turn? A handful of GSE watchers interviewed by Inside Mortgage Finance believe there’s a greater likelihood of a cut in FHA premiums before the fall election as opposed to the Federal Housing Finance Agency doing something about loan-level price adjustments or guaranty fees. In general, it’s...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw significant increases in the flow of both refinance loans and purchase-money mortgages during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. And for the first time in a long while, nonbank mortgage companies delivered over half of the single-family mortgages securitized by the two government-sponsored enterprises. Fannie and Freddie securitized...[Includes three data tables]
RSS