Fannie Affordable Housing Challenge. Fannie Mae launched a $10 million challenge to help address the affordable housing crisis. Through the Sustainable Communities Innovation Challenge, the GSE will commit $10 million over two years to attract promising ideas that will help alleviate affordable housing issues. Fannie expects to receive proposals from across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Maria Evans, Fannie’s vice president of sustainable communities’ partnership and innovation, said, “With the Challenge, we are looking for new concepts, designs, and ways of solving our nation’s affordable housing issues from innovators who are working inside and outside of the traditional housing industry. Great ideas can come from anywhere.” The goal is to...
With Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buybacks at post-crisis lows, mortgage sellers should reevalu-ate their repurchase reserves for a number of reasons that could impact their business, according to mortgage industry experts. With loan quality significantly improved and underwriting standards tight-ened, many lenders are likely overestimating potential buybacks and carrying excess reserves.
DoubleLine Capital, an investment management firm, recently created a new entity with plans to issue non-agency MBS and commercial MBS. These activities will be conducted via the new Mortgage Opportunities Capital, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust, through three affiliate companies, has entered into a structured deal to finance Fannie Mae mortgage servicing rights and excess servicing spread.
Investors might be seeing better performance from the credit rating agencies these days. In two new reports, the Securities and Exchange Commission says ratings firms are more compliant and are utilizing information technology to a greater extent, all while remaining competitive, especially some of the smaller ones.
Syncora Guarantee, Inc., an insurer of structured-finance transactions, has settled a long-running dispute with Greenpoint Mortgage Funding over hundreds of millions of dollars in losses on bundles of soured home-equity mortgages held in trust.
Trading MBS will be slightly less expensive this year as the Fixed Income Clearing Corp. is preparing to eliminate a fee it imposed to help pay for technology upgrades. The fee applied to FICC members and generally ranged from $1,000 per month to $20,000 per month based on trading activity.
Progressives are worried that in 2019 a new Federal Housing Finance Agency director will takeover, undoing much of what they like about the current system…
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