A bill to replace the Federal Housing Finance Agency with a beefed up Ginnie Mae and set Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on a path to liquidation has been reintroduced in the House. The Partnership to Strengthen Homeownership Act was first introduced in July 2014 to wind down Fannie and Freddie over a five-year timeframe. Reps. John Delaney, D-MD, John Carney, D-DE, and Jim Himes, D-CT, are the lead sponsors of the measure. They said the bill takes the best ideas from both parties to create a housing finance system that combines the strengths of the private and public sectors.The congressmen agreed that things need to be done differently.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to turn their focus in loan-quality reviews to more freshly originated mortgages, the vast majority of which are current. A new Inside The GSEs analysis of disclosures made by the GSEs to the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that most of the lender repurchases made in 2014 continued to be associated with older, pre-crisis loans. But the biggest volume of pending and unresolved buyback demands were tied to loans securitized in 2013 and 2014. Sellers repurchased or provided indemnification on some $4.046 billion of mortgages during 2014, the disclosures reveal. They were split roughly evenly between Freddie ($2.031 billion) and Fannie ($2.014 billion)...[includes exclusive chart]
During 4Q14 Javelin Mortgage Investment sold all of its holdings of prime, fixed-rate, senior bonds from new-issue jumbo MBS – $119.6 million of non-agency product in total.
Tom Popik, research director of Campbell Surveys, notes that the Quicken Loans’ call-center model can be an accepted alternative to local mortgage branches.
The Mortgage Bankers Association took issue this week with two proposals pending before the Basel Committee on Bank Supervision that could have negative repercussions on U.S. mortgage financing and on American homebuyers. Back in December, the Basel Committee put out a “consultative document” that included proposed revisions to its Standardized Approach for credit risk, including updated risk-weight calibrations. As applied to the U.S. ...
In 2014, Freddie Mac securitized $6.983 billion of re-performing mortgages, double what it did the year prior, and a sign that this niche market is heating up. As for Fannie Mae’s participation in “re-performers,” that’s a different matter entirely. The government-sponsored enterprise has yet to stick its toe in the water, though a spokesman for the company told Inside MBS & ABS that “it’s something we continue to evaluate.” But just how hot might the sector get ...
Ocwen Financial pushed back this week against claims from large investors that have worked to remove the nonbank as servicer on 119 non-agency MBS. “By all indications, the holders employed unsupportable assumptions and manipulated their analysis to advance their agenda,” Timothy Hayes, an executive vice president and general counsel at Ocwen, wrote in a letter to the trustees of the MBS in question. The letter was a response to claims made ...