Fannie Mae rolled out HomeReady this week, a revised affordable lending product to replace its MyCommunityMortgage program, which focuses on helping borrowers with low- and moderate-incomes obtain mortgage credit. With lender input, the GSE made a number of changes to make the product more efficient for both lenders and borrowers. Fannie will add it to Desktop Underwriter later this year. HomeReady expects to create business opportunities for lenders serving the changing demographics and the shift in borrower needs. “I think it will definitely give lenders some additional flexibility in being able to qualify moderate income and lower income borrowers that they don’t have today,” said Glen Corso, executive director of Community Mortgage Lenders of America.
First-time homebuyers make up a significant part of the purchase-mortgage market, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a hard time competing with Ginnie Mae, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis of loan-level data.The three agencies securitized $118.90 billion of first-time buyer mortgages during the first six months of 2015, but Ginnie accounted for over half (52.4 percent) of the business. Ginnie’s big advantage is that it gets all the FHA and VA loans, while the GSEs so far have not gotten much traction in their reduced-downpayment programs. First-time buyers typically have less savings for a downpayment and often have less-stellar credit profiles. In the first half of this year, the average loan-to-value ratio for...(charts)
The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s announcement last week that it will increase both the single-family low-income and multifamily low-income purchase goals was met with mixed reaction.In its final housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 2015 through 2017, the single-family low-income goal was raised just one percentage point to 24 percent. But some housing industry groups weren’t necessarily happy with the single-family goal. “At 24 percent, the affordable housing goals fall short of what can and should be expected of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” said Center for Responsible Lending President Mike Calhoun. “These companies have the capacity to reach a greater percentage of lower-wealth, creditworthy households, allowing borrowers to build wealth through homeownership.”
Fannie Mae said last week that Lone Star Funds’ LSF9 Mortgage Holdings was the sole winning bidder on its second sale of two pools of non-performing loans announced in July. The government-sponsored enterprise offered separate pools of approximately 3,900 loans, totaling $765 million in unpaid principal balance. The first pool included 831 loans with an aggregate UPB of $175.4 million and $211,179 average loan size. The second pool included 3,034 loans with an aggregate UPB of $589.4 million and average loan size of $194,298. On average, the loans in both pools have been delinquent for 37 months with an average BPO LTV of 76 percent. The transaction expects to settle Sept. 25.
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association emphasized its concerns about the GSEs’ single security initiative in a letter sent last week to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. A large part of SIFMA’s letter focused on a lack of alignment between Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The trade group believes that the FHFA doesn’t have a strong enough role in maintaining the policy and practice alignment of the GSEs. “This causes significant concern about the potential outcome of the initiative,” the letter said, adding that the effective alignment of policies and practices, to achieve a continuing alignment to security performance, is the single most important factor in the success, or lack thereof, of the initiative.
The Blackstone Group has emerged as the “Big Kahuna” of mortgage company acquisitions this year, gobbling up – or agreeing to gobble up – at least five mortgage banking firms or a majority of their assets. To date, most of the purchases have centered on small- to medium-sized originators, except for its latest conquest: a majority stake in Stearns Holdings, LLC, parent company of Stearns Lending, the nation’s 12th largest originator. Although Blackstone is publicly traded ...
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