On August 11, 2016, the most severe storm in decades hit southern Louisiana, including the city of Baton Rouge and 22 surrounding parishes. The massive rainfall brought an estimated 29 inches over a two-day period, submerging homes in three to six feet of floodwater and stranding thousands of people in their homes. On the east side of Baton Rouge is the Amite River, which separates the Ascension and Livingston parishes, where a good number of GMFS Mortgage employees ...

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both want to promote homeownership, but they have different views on how to go about it. The Democrats’ platform supports giving “everyone a fair shot at homeownership” in America by putting them in a financial position to own a home, and preserving the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage while “modernizing” credit score models. The GOP platform assures voters that the “American Dream” of homeownership “is not a stale slogan,” ...

Mortgage lenders were making big strides in reducing the number of loan defects related to documentation just as the new integrated disclosure rule took effect, leading to a surge in compliance-related defects. That’s according to a new report based on an analysis of the post-closing quality control data associated with more than 50,000 mortgages that was performed by ACES Risk Management Corp., otherwise known as ARMCO, a provider of web-based audit technology ...

Recent nonperforming loan activity at the GSEs includes billion dollar transactions in which Fannie Mae revealed the winning bidders of its seventh NPL auction and Freddie Mac marketed its first multi-servicer NPL sale. Subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs, Neuberger Berman, Lone Star and MFA were the winning bidders of Fannie’s latest nonperforming loan sale, totaling $1.06 billion. The GSE announced last week that it had sold 6,800 mortgages total, in four separate pools. Goldman’s MTGLQ Investors won the largest chunk, 2,887 loans with an aggregate unpaid principal balance of $468,901,523. Neuberger’s PRMF Acquisition LLC won the second pool, 1,551 loans, and Lone Star’s...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency seeks comments on its National Survey of Mortgage Originations proposal to collect information from 24,000 borrowers annually about their experience with choosing and taking on a mortgage. Formerly known as the National Survey of Mortgage Borrowers, the FHFA renamed it earlier this summer to avoid confusion with the American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers. The ASMB is different in that it’s FHFA’s tool to solicit information specifically on the borrower’s experience with maintaining their existing mortgage. “In particular, the NSMO provides timely information on newly-originated mortgages and those borrowing that is not available from existing sources,” said the FHFA.

A GSE investor in Kentucky lost her case last week when the court dismissed claims that the government damaged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by implementing the net worth sweep of the GSEs’ profits. Arnetia Robinson alleged that her investments in Fannie and Freddie were “materially damaged” when the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Treasury Department amended the existing preferred stock purchase agreement in 2012. According to court records, Robinson was seeking declaratory and injunctive relief that would prevent enforcement of portions of the PSPA. She contended that the sweep violates the Housing and Economic Recovery Act and said the Treasury acted “arbitrarily and capriciously.”

Talk of housing finance reform is just a “solution in search of a problem,” according to one housing expert. Tim Howard, former senior executive at Fannie Mae for more than 20 years, said that with the GSEs’ loans performing well, the argument for replacing them is becoming harder to make. “It is no longer credible to claim that replacing Fannie and Freddie with an untested alternative, forcing them to do mandatory risk sharing or requiring them to hold bank-like levels of capital could possibly fix what now ails the U.S. residential mortgage market,” said Howard. He said the small size of the credit box is one of the primary problems that needs to be addressed, explaining that...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are well underway preparing to implement the Uniform Closing Dataset that will become mandatory in the second half of 2017. A big part of the change is moving to an electronic process to support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s closing disclosure.This month, Fannie announced a new collection service that it said offers flexible options for delivering the UCD file in multiple phases of the business process. It includes the ability to verify data and eligibility electronically. Banks can submit either a single file or batch file, get data quality and eligibility feedback messages, and each submission is...

Freddie is busing potential homebuyers to tour affordable housing properties in Chicago as a way to reach low- to moderate income borrowers and unload foreclosed homes in the city.The event, to be held on Sept. 17, is sponsored by the GSE’s HomeSteps real estate unit and the Chicago Urban League. It will include tips on buying foreclosed properties.HomeSteps is the mortgage giant’s program to sell foreclosed properties. While the program is available across the country, it offers special financing for buyers in only 10 states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Plaintiffs in a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholder case challenging the GSEs’ quarterly earnings sweep dropped some of the charges in their original complaint to bypass the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s motion to consolidate all of the cases. The pair, Gary Hindes and David Jacobs, is looking to dismiss counts that allege derivative breach of contract and other similar claims and instead allege “unjust enrichment” against the Treasury Department. The plaintiffs bought the class action suit focusing on Delaware and Virginia corporate law on behalf of themselves and other stockholders. Court documents in David Jacobs and Gary Hindes v. The Federal Housing Finance Agency...