Hensarling is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, which means any Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac reform bill must first go through his panel, whether he’s the author or not.
Approvals by state regulators and federal agencies of mortgage-related mergers and acquisitions can drag on for a variety of reasons, but lenders and servicers can help speed the process by providing detailed disclosures, according to industry attorneys. Keisha Whitehall Wolfe, counsel at the law firm of Mayer Brown, suggested providing regulators with details about what is changing at a company due to pending M&A activity and what isn’t changing. She suggested providing a ...
Mortgage rates fell this week for the first time in almost two months, but the respite may not be enough to save the industry from what could turn out to be a brutal round of belt-tightening and job cuts. Then again, it all depends on what type of lender you work for. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Trends over the past few weeks, many conventional lenders are being extremely cautious about their headcounts, while non-agency originators are feeling ...
Projections for gradual increases to the homeownership rate might be overly optimistic, according to some industry analysts. The homeownership rate fell to the lowest level on record in 2016 and then rose in 2017 on an annual basis for the first time since 2004, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Some industry participants predict that the rate will likely continue to climb gradually, citing declines in renter households and other trends. However, an analysis by Laurie Goodman and ...
Most experts agree that passing housing-finance reform legislation in 2018 now looks improbable, leaving the immediate future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the hands of the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Researchers at the Urban Institute say that if legislation remains stalled, the two GSEs could be placed into receivership and reconstituted. Laurie Goodman, director of UI’s Housing Finance Policy Center, said Fannie and Freddie could be wound down within five years, under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, and be replaced by new entities with no government backstop. She noted that this scenario would leave the fate of government support for the GSEs’ legacy mortgage-backed securities unclear.
Freddie Mac this week rolled out a pilot program that aims to lay off credit risk on mortgages it buys to a group of offshore insurance firms, using Arch Capital Group as a conduit and manager. Initially, 12 lenders will be part of the program, including Freedom Mortgage, the nation’s fifth largest originator overall. Arch is the parent company of the nation’s largest private mortgage insurer. Industry sources told Inside The GSEs that Fannie Mae is working on a similar pilot, but details were sketchy. A Fannie spokesman would only say, “It’s a bit premature to comment.” And a source close to the matter added that Fannie is “always looking for innovative ways” to reduce risk.
House-flip purchase financing totaled $16.1 billion in 2017, up 27 percent from $12.7 billion in 2016 – its highest dollar volume in a decade, according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ fourth quarter and yearend home-flipping report. The report showed 207,088 single-family houses and condominiums were flipped last year, a 1 percent increase year-over-year. It was the highest total of homes flipped since 2006. The flipped houses represented 5.9 percent of all single-family homes and ...
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