Spot loans are currently prohibited, but the agency is said to be reevaluating the product because of reports of first-time homebuyers having difficulty in obtaining FHA financing for condo unit purchases and seniors seeking reverse mortgages to tap the equity in their units.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can be rehabilitated and returned to the private sector, with or without Congressional action, an expert noted this week, adding his voice to the growing chorus of those calling to retain the GSEs. Speaking at a GSE forum sponsored by Investors Unite, Joshua Rosner, managing director at Graham Fisher & Co., said that GSE reform “shouldn’t reinvent a wheel that has driven the secondary market successfully for generations.”
It would either require an act of Congress or a commitment from Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s regulator to bring the two GSEs out of government conservatorship, depending on which expert you believe, and perhaps who is heading the Treasury Department. Investment banker Jim Millstein is once again pushing for a plan to deal with the future of Fannie and Freddie, saying the two GSEs should be allowed to rebuild capital. In a recent report, Millstein – who at the Treasury Department oversaw the restructuring of bailed-out insurer American International Group – says if the two firms are allowed to recapitalize, they could create a cash cushion that can be placed in front of Treasury’s existing backstop.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley last week filed suit against Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, alleging that the GSEs are violating state law by failing to let non-profits buy foreclosed homes to sell them back to their former homeowners. In 2012, Massachusetts lawmakers passed An Act to Prevent Unnecessary and Unreasonable Foreclosures, which prohibits creditors from blocking or placing conditions on home sales to non-profits that intend to resell those properties back to their former owners. The AG’s complaint, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, says the GSEs failed to comply with the Bay State law by “blocking foreclosure buyback programs” designed to help residents keep their homes.
Attorneys for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac junior shareholders have doubled down in their assertions that the government had no authority to initiate a “net-worth sweep” of nearly all GSE profits. They say a federal court should not only decline Uncle Sam’s recent motion to dismiss but also “vacate the illegal sweep amendment.” In a joint rebuttal motion filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, attorneys for Perry Capital and Fairholme Funds note that in attempt to evade judicial scrutiny, the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency raise “a host of frivolous and irrelevant challenges” to the plaintiffs’ legal standing while ignoring investors” core assertion that the 2012 sweep was illegal.
A noted GSE hawk successfully pushed through a legislative amendment that would block Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from paying into the National Housing Trust Fund “at a time when they still owe money to the American people.” The amendment by Rep. Ed Royce, R-CA, to H.R. 4745, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2015, would prohibit the GSEs from using funds for the NHTF, which was established under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.
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