The Urban Institute has suggested separating FHA’s reverse mortgage business from future actuarial audits of the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund because it is producing a skewed picture of MMIF finances. In a recent blog, Laurie Goodman, director of the institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center, said including the highly volatile and unpredictable Home Equity Conversion Mortgage portfolio in FHA’s solvency calculation severely distorts the fund’s true financial condition ...

After the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced last week that the conforming loan limit for GSE mortgages will remain at $417,000 for 2016, and capped at $625,500 in high-cost areas, the California Association of Realtors said it was disappointed that the loan limits weren’t raised across the board, given that home prices in that region are on the upswing and among the highest in the country. The FHFA concluded that the average home value in the third quarter still has not reached the level it was in the third quarter of 2007. According to the expanded-data Home Price Index, national average home prices in the third quarter of 2015 remained...

Loan modifications and other loss mitigation efforts continued to decline in the third quarter as mortgage performance improved. Servicers still face pressure on loss mitigation efforts, particularly with the Home Affordable Modification Program. Some 98,074 loan mods were completed in the third quarter of 2015, according to data released by Hope Now this week. Mod activity declined by 18.0 percent compared with the previous quarter and was down 13.3 percent from a year ago ...

It’s official. With no fanfare or big news headlines, President Obama signed the salary cap legislation limiting the salaries of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEOs to $600,000 each, the day before Thanksgiving. There was strong opposition from many, including White House and Treasury officials, against the new multi-million dollar executive compensation packages proposed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency earlier this year. After a pay hike earlier in the year, salaries are now back at the $600,000 cap, previously set by former FHFA Director Ed DeMarco. The bill by Rep. Ed Royce’s, R-CA, to suspend the CEOs’ $4 million annual compensation packages passed out of the House by a 57-1 vote and was followed by a senate version from...

Commercial banks and savings institutions continued to backpedal away from the business of servicing residential mortgages for other investors during the third quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank call reports. Banks and thrifts serviced a total of $4.139 trillion of home mortgages for other investors at the end of September, most of them pooled in mortgage-backed securities. That was down 1.2 percent from June and off ... [Includes one data chart]

As the Federal Housing Finance Agency continues to ramp up efforts to get the word out about the Home Affordable Refinance Program, which is officially down to its last 12 months, the agency reported a sharp 18 percent quarterly decline in the number of takers in the third quarter of 2015. There were 25,824 HARP refinances in the third quarter, down from the 31,561 HARP refinances completed in the second quarter, according to new loan-count figures released by the FHFA. HARP activity accounted for about 5 percent of all refinances in the third quarter, mirroring that of the previous quarter. While both GSEs were down in HARP refi volume, Fannie Mae had more activity than Freddie...

After several months of being in the test phase, Fannie Mae officially released its new loan delivery application on Dec. 1. The new platform was designed to be easier to navigate with enhanced reporting capabilities, greater transparency and improved edit management capabilities. Customers have had a chance to get familiar with the program and take advantage of an online tutorial since September. For those ready to fully implement the application, it’s up and running on Fannie’s website as of this week, but there’s still time to ease into it. Both the old and new loan delivery applications will be available during the transition period. Lenders...

Marking several milestones, including the first time that Freddie Mac has issued both a Structured Agency Credit Risk offering and Agency Credit Insurance Structure in the same month, the GSE announced last week that it will sell more than $590 million in STACR 2015-HQA2. This is its last STACR offering for the year and it obtained its largest Agency Credit Insurance Structure so far, for a combined $702.4 million limit. The two are related. Through Freddie’s ACIS program, the GSE buys insurance policies that transfer a portion of the credit risk associated with its STACR debt note reference pools from insurance and reinsurance companies around the world.

Fannie Mae said that in the midst of trying to reach first-time homebuyers, a new trend has emerged with existing homeowners struggling to become repeat, move-up buyers.There was a 40 percent decrease in repeat buyers from 2002 to 2014, according to recent commentary from Jude Landis, vice president, single-family credit policy at Fannie. Credit did not appear to be holding them back either, because even among homeowners with mid-tier credit scores, between 680 and 740, the number of repeat home purchases dropped dramatically. “Owners of their first homes may have the credit eligibility to move up, but low housing equity appear to be holding them back,” she said.

Although the Federal Housing Finance Agency said that Freddie Mac failed to meet all of its goals for low-income homebuyers in 2014, the GSE apparently has put the wheels in motion to meet its target for 2015. But Sen. Bob Menendez, D-NJ, ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development, wrote the FHFA asking why the goals fell by the wayside.Don Layton, Freddie’s CEO, told Inside The GSEs that the GSE has been working since early in the year to make sure those goals are met. Those preparations included the hiring of Danny Gardner in March, who leads a new unit specializing in affordable housing.