The furor continues to grow over recapitalizing and releasing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and this week’s third quarter earnings report, along with recent comments by senior government officials, likely only intensified the debate. Several industry groups addressed letters to President Obama urging the White House to take a stand now instead of waiting for housing reform legislation in Congress and release the GSEs from conservatorship while allowing them to re-build capital. The most recent letter was from two mortgage trade groups that represent smaller nonbanks. This week, the Community Home Lenders Association and Community Mortgage Lenders of America addressed a letter to Obama arguing that the Federal Housing Finance Agency has the power under a...

A bill to cap the salaries of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEOs at $600,000 is expected to become law, but has been rescheduled for vote in the House sometime during the week of Nov. 16. The budget vote last week, coupled with the debate over the Export-Import Bank and election of a new House Speaker, resulted in the salary cap legislation being postponed for a floor vote at a later date this month, said Rep. Ed Royce, R-CA. Royce introduced the “Equity in Government Compensation Act” back in May. It would suspend the $4 million compensation packages for Fannie’s Timothy Mayapoulos and Freddie’s Donald Layton that were approved early this year after...

Investors will be able to exchange existing Freddie Mac participation certificates for new single securities when the GSE creates new “mirror” securities to help facilitate the transition.The exchange program will be available when the new single security goes live and Freddie plans to keep it open for the foreseeable future. Held in a Federal Reserve account, the mirror securities will not increase the outstanding principal balance of Freddie MBS, the GSE explained in an update on the exchange program. The mirror securities will track existing Freddie MBS but substitute a 55-day payment cycle for Freddie’s current 45-day cycle. Freddie will pay compensation equal to the fair market value of the 10 days of lost float when...

Fannie Mae’s most recognizable headquarters in Washington, DC, along with two others, recently hit the market as the GSE plans to sell the properties in preparation for its move downtown in 2017. Commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield began marketing the GSE’s three properties in late October. They include the storied main building at 3900 Wisconsin Ave., which replicates Williamsburg, VA, architecture, a smaller building at 3939 Wisconsin Ave. and Fannie’s 1990’s-era building at 4240 Connecticut Ave. The primary building and land are currently valued at approximately $92.1 million, according to 2015 records from the DC Office of Tax and Revenue. The Connecticut Avenue building is valued at $84 million and the 3939 Wisconsin Ave. building is...

Conforming Loan Limit Highly Unlikely to Change in 2016. The baseline $417,000 conforming loan limit is almost certain to remain unchanged in 2016, according to an Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of key house-price trends. Recent news reports have stated that the Federal Housing Finance Agency is considering raising the $417,000 baseline limit to $500,000, but knowledgeable sources say these reports are unfounded. Freddie officials confirmed that the agency does not have discretionary authority to raise the baseline limit unless the Home Price Index mechanism provides for an increase. NSM Partners with FHLB. Nationstar Mortgage announced a program with the Federal Home Loan Bank to provide...

Most publicly-traded companies reported declining net earnings from their mortgage banking operations during the third quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis. A diverse group of 34 major mortgage lenders that includes most of the top lenders and servicers posted a combined $3.56 billion in income from their mortgage banking activity during the third quarter. That was down 25.8 percent from the second quarter of 2015. The declining profitability was...[Includes one data table]

Vendors that have been supplying the mortgage lending community with the technology necessary to implement the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s integrated disclosure rule are suddenly under regulatory scrutiny over the struggles some lenders have had in being fully compliant with the new regulation. The so-called TRID rule took effect Oct. 3, 2015. A dark cloud began...

Mortgage lenders made it tougher for borrowers to obtain mortgage credit in the second quarter of 2015 compared to the first three months of the year. The mortgage credit availability index overall fell slightly in the second quarter to 5.3, down from 5.5 in the prior quarter, although that level still remains above the low of 4.6 in the third quarter of 2013, according to the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center (HFPC). The HFPC uses...

FCI Lender Services, the nation’s largest private-money servicer, is sticking its toe in the lending market by teaming up with Blackrock Mortgage Investment to extend credit to investors in single-family rental properties. This month, the Anaheim, CA-based FCI rolled out two SFR products and one tied to investors looking to buy nonperforming mortgages. According to a rate sheet provided to Inside Mortgage Trends, one of the SFR products requires...

Nobody likes getting a mortgage, but interactive technology – if implemented correctly – can make the process significantly more transparent and less stressful, industry experts say. There is an opportunity in technology to make the system more transparent and help educate the next generation of homeowners, as well as minority groups, said Robert Greenbaum, director of communications and marketing at Fannie Mae, during a panel session at the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “They aspire...