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...

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.

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 ...

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,” ...

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 ...

Mortgage repurchase activity by banks and thrifts took an unexpected turn higher during the second quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call reports. Call reports show that banks and thrifts repurchased $804.1 million of single-family mortgages, or otherwise indemnified a buyer, during the second quarter. That was up $40.0 million or 5.2 percent from the first three months of the year and marked the second straight quarterly ... [Includes one data chart]

Benchmarking and other advanced analytics are helping many lenders grow their originations, according to TransUnion, a provider of data, analytics and consulting services. A recent survey by the company also found that a majority of lending organizations lack the resources to realize the competitive benefits of analytics. Versta Research surveyed 309 banks on behalf of TransUnion. Some 66 percent of the lenders said data and analytics are evolving faster than ...

Mortgage bankers booked hefty earnings on their loan origination and secondary marketing during the second quarter, but servicing hedges deepened, according to the latest Mortgage Bankers Association performance report. The average company participating in the survey reported pretax income of $2.913 million during the second quarter, nearly quadruple the average for the previous period. That lifted year-to-date pretax income to $3.665 million, still off 16.7 percent ...