Fannie Mae Gets Interim CEO. Fannie Mae announced this week that it has appointed Hugh Frater as interim chief executive officer. Frater's appointment will be effective on Oct. 16, 2018, subject to final approval from the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency published its 2019 annual performance plan last week for overseeing the GSEs and Federal Home Loan Banks next year. The performance plan supports the FHFA’s long-range strategic plan, and includes goals, performance measures and targets, and strategies to accomplish those goals.

Fannie Mae recently sold its three Northern Virginia buildings as part of its plan to consolidate the 1.5 million square feet it has in office space in Virginia into one central hub. The buildings were sold to MRP Realty and Artemis Real Estate Partners. But Fannie will continue to occupy the buildings until its new 8,500 square foot headquarters at Reston Gateway, also in Virginia, is completed in 2022.

Freddie Mac closed on a low-income housing tax credit sale late last week after reentering the market for the first time in a decade. Up until the fourth quarter of last year, the GSEs haven’t been allowed to participate in the LIHTC market since they’ve been in conservatorship.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both recently announced the winners of their latest nonperforming loan auctions, which included eight separate pools amounting to $2.4 billion. The largest sale was from Fannie and consisted of 10,300 loans totaling $1.88 billion divided among five pools, all won by MTGLQ Investors, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.

Fannie Mae is looking to make about 22 changes to its duty-to-serve plan and the Federal Housing Finance Agency wants input on four of them. Both Fannie and Freddie Mac released their duty-to-serve underserved markets plans for 2018-2020 in December 2017. DTS is aimed at financing for low- and moderate-income families.

Freddie Mac will begin purchasing community land trust mortgages next month to help support affordable housing efforts. Lenders have been reluctant to make loans on these shared equity homeownership programs because they considered them riskier and had to keep them in their portfolio.

Reven Housing Funding, La Jolla, CA, has closed on a $51.3 million mortgage from Arbor Agency Lending, a Freddie Mac-approved seller/servicer, according to a recent 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Freddie, said one GSE official, is the takeout commitment behind the Arbor loan.

Pilot programs implemented by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over recent years will be the focus of a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing next week. As complaints mount about the process in which a number of pilots were introduced and their threat to the primary market, the Senate decided to tackle the issue during the Oct. 18 “Oversight of Pilot Programs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” hearing.

A recent court ruling that affirmed the validity of claims that the GSE net worth sweep breached an implied covenant of good faith is a big deal for shareholders, according to the plaintiff’s attorney.David Thompson of Cooper and Kirk told Inside The GSEs this week that U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth’s decision is a “significant victory” for the plaintiffs.