The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s annual report on housing showed that Freddie Mac fell short of meeting two of its four single-family affordable housing goals for 2017. The GSE came close but didn’t meet the low-income and very low-income purchase goals. The low-income goal was 24.0 percent and Freddie came in at 23.2 percent. The very low-income purchase target was 6.0 percent and Freddie was at 5.7 percent. The FHFA recently notified Freddie of the shortage ...

More needs to be done to incorporate affordable rental units into all geographic areas, according to Freddie Mac, which released a series of white papers last week focusing on the underserved multifamily housing markets. The GSE is publishing a total of eight papers as part of its duty-to-serve initiative to bring the issue of affordable apartments to the forefront. One of the papers explored how state housing finance agencies help guide low-income housing tax credit investment to high-income ...

Deal structure – everything from pre-issuance loan reviews to enforcement mechanisms when things go wrong – vary significantly in the non-agency MBS market, experts noted at the Structured Finance Industry Group’s recent residential mortgage conference in New York.

Goldman Sachs has forgiven a total of $78.7 million in principal on 746 first-lien mortgages since Aug. 1, 2018, as it neared fulfillment of a $1.8 billion consumer-relief obligation under two mortgage-related settlement agreements, according to independent monitor Eric Green.

PrimeLending is churning through loan originators, recruiting strong candidates and letting go of “non-performers” as lenders battle for purchase mortgages. In recent months, the retail lender owned by PlainsCapital Bank hired about 250 LOs and released about 200 others, according to Alan White, chairman of PlainsCapital Bank and co-CEO and vice chairman of Hilltop Holdings, which owns the bank. “We’ve been able to upgrade our staff,” he said during Hilltop’s earnings call ...

First Horizon National Corp. is seeing strong profits from its warehouse lending efforts. Loans to mortgage companies are the bank holding company’s most profitable lending business, according to officials at First Horizon. Warehouse lending is completed through the company’s banking subsidiary, First Tennessee. As of the end of the second quarter, First Tennessee had $3.0 billion in warehouse lending commitments, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. BJ Losch, an executive ...

The profit picture varied widely among the shrinking number of publicly-traded nonbank mortgage lenders during the third quarter. A new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis reveals that seven companies generated a total of $235.45 million from their mortgage banking businesses during the third quarter. That was up 14.8 percent from the previous period largely because New Residential Mortgage increased its profits and Impac cut its losses. An eighth nonbank ... [Includes one data chart]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac posted a combined net profit of $6.72 billion for the third quarter while continuing to expand their credit-risk transfer programs. GSE earnings as a whole were down slightly from the $6.96 billion in the previous quarter, but that can be primarily attributed to Fannie’s 10.0 percent drop from the second quarter to $4.01 billion. Fannie’s new chief financial officer, Celeste Brown, said the decrease was due to lower credit-related income ... [Includes one data chart]

There is widespread consensus about the future role of the government in mortgage finance, but it’s by no means homogenous. The Trump administration gets to name a new director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency who can work with Treasury to steer the GSEs toward a revised, likely narrower, role. The new FHFA chief will have command of the enterprises for five years, with dim prospects of Congress tackling long-term reform. Michael Stegman, senior fellow for housing policy at ...

This week’s midterm election ushered in a sea-change in the House of Representatives but it’s uncertain how it will influence housing finance reform. Now that the Democrats are the majority in the House, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) is in line to serve as chair of the House Financial Services Committee. Back in July, Waters said fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be a top priority if Democrats take control of the House. She’s been at odds with outgoing chair, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX ...