The Community Home Lenders Association wants to make sure that small lender protections like preserving the cash window and limiting the number of guarantors in the market are included in GSE reform legislation. Late last week, the trade group sent a letter to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs about the importance of access for small lenders. “Fannie and Freddie must be preserved and recapitalized, pursuant to a utility model, with the capability to serve the entire small-lender market on fully competitive terms,” the letter said. CHLA said a utility model would work best for small lenders because it ensures their primary role of facilitating loan securitizations.

The National Association of Realtors said GSE guarantee fees are gouging homeowners and urged the Federal Housing Finance Agency to slash them. Its argument is based on the lower corporate tax rate resulting from the 2017 tax law. The trade group, which has been campaigning for lower g-fees for a while now, notes that g-fees are based in part on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac target pre-tax rate of return. Lower tax rates change that calculation, the NAR said. “To account for the impact of tax reform on the rate of return, the FHFA should reduce g-fees to reflect the lower corporate tax rate and to preserve the current target rate of return,” said Elizabeth Mendenhall, NAR’s president.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency finalized its 2018-2022 strategic plan this week. A draft proposal of the plan was released back in October for public input. The long-range plan focuses on three strategic goals surrounding issues of safety and soundness of the GSEs; ensuring liquidity, stability and access in housing finance; and managing the conservatorship. When identifying risk in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the FHFA said it plans to carefully document and communicate any adverse examination findings and conclusions to the GSEs.

Freddie Prices First Lower LTV STACR of 2018. Freddie Mac priced a $900 million Structured Agency Credit Risk debt notes offering last week, its first lower loan-to-value deal of the year. STACR 2018-DNA1 has a reference pool of single-family mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of approximately $34.7 billion. The reference pool includes loans with LTVs ranging from 60 to 80 percent. CoreLogic to Redistribute GSE CRT Data. CoreLogic announced this week that it is redistributing credit risk transfer loan-level data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The CRT redistribution will include Fannie Mae’s Connecticut Avenue Securities data as well as data from Freddie Mac’s Structured Agency...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had one of their slowest quarters ever in new credit-risk transfer deals late in 2017, but ended the year with record output all the same.

Ginnie Mae would become the linchpin of the conventional secondary mortgage market of the future, providing an explicit government guarantee for MBS issued by one of several new entities, under a plan being drafted by Senate Republicans.

The National Association of Realtors this week asked the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lower the MBS guarantee fees charged by the two government-sponsored enterprises, citing lower corporate tax rates ushered in under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Freddie Mac is offering a new cash benefit to sellers of loans that fall in a narrow band of loan sizes that typically are used for specified MBS pools. The new category targeted for cash deliveries are 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with loan amounts ranging from $175,000 to $200,000.

Departing Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen quietly rode off into the sunset this week, with the Fed’s Open Market Committee deciding to keep interest rates unchanged, as expected. The fed funds target range remains at 1.25 percent to 1.50 percent.

Data initiatives meant to streamline technological innovations and provide better information are actually giving mortgage lenders a hard time. A new report by Fannie Mae showed that 74 percent of lenders agree that attempts to standardize data are needed, but many run into challenges in implementation.