While technological advances such as automated evaluations are improving the quality of the origination process, Fannie Mae said that the industry will still need appraisals. Renee Schultz, Fannie’s senior vice president of single-family, said everyone gets so concerned about this technology but it’s really just bringing the industry to the 21st century. “Even doctors now are going away from paper,” she added. “All of the technology that we’re working on is about making the process more simple, more certain, and more transparent for lenders and servicers and investors,” said Schultz, while speaking at a Credit...
Fannie Mae’s latest two front-end Credit Insurance Risk Transfer transactions included a record number of reinsurers taking on about $20 billion in unpaid principal balance. There were 22 reinsurers in all participating in the GSEs’ fifth and sixth transaction. The risk transfer will take place before Fannie’s acquisition of the covered loans. And insurance coverage will be in effect immediately after the loans are acquired.They both became effective in March. The GSE explained that CIRT FE 2018-1 will shift a portion of the credit risk to a group of reinsurers on a pool of 21 to 30-year single-family fixed-rate loans.
Freddie Mac Reviewing Support to Potential Predatory Lender. Freddie Mac is looking into a loan it guaranteed as part of an affordable single-family rental pilot program. This comes after a housing advocacy group filed a lawsuit in federal court in April that argued an investor in Indianapolis was selling rental homes through a rent-to-own arrangement that is supposed to be excluded from the program. Casas Barata Aqui allegedly targets Latino buyers and is in violation of the Fair Housing Act. The group received financing that was a part of loans issued by CoreVest Finance. Fannie Promotes Chief Risk Officer. Fannie Mae recently promoted Kimberly Johnson from chief risk officer to executive vice president and chief operating officer.
A former Fannie executive (pre-federal takeover) said that when he worked at the GSE, “We looked at doing this, but were told it wasn’t in the charter and so we didn’t proceed.”
Mortgage sellers continue to get a little more adventurous in the kinds of loans they deliver to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to an exclusive Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of data on mortgage-backed securities issued during the first quarter of 2018. The credit loosening was more apparent in the purchase-mortgage sector, which saw declining production volume from seasonal factors. In the first quarter, 12.61 percent of purchase loans sold ... [Includes two data charts]
About 70.4 percent of the home loans originated in 2017 were sold to secondary market investors, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data released this week. According to the preliminary HMDA data made available by federal regulators, lenders reported $1.738 trillion in first-lien single-family mortgage originations in 2017. HMDA data cover about 96 percent of the market. The biggest buyers were Fannie Mae ... [Includes one data chart]