Counterparty risk appears to be on the mind of the FHFA…

Treasury Rumored to Appoint Fannie Counsel as Deputy. Brian Brooks, Fannie Mae’s general counsel and former colleague of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, is reportedly being tapped as deputy secretary of the Treasury Department, according to Axios. The Trump administration has not confirmed the appointment. Brooks worked with Mnuchin at OneWest Bank. Freddie Mac Prices First Tax-Exempt ML Certificates Offering. Freddie Mac expanded its support for affordable housing with a new series of credit-risk transfer securities backed by Tax-Exempt Loans (TELs) made by state or local housing agencies and secured by affordable rental housing. The company recently priced approximately...

A new lawsuit arguing the merits of the Treasury net worth sweep was filed in Michigan, while other cases continue to hang in the balance in various phases of discovery. Michael Rop, Stewart Knoepp and Alvin Wilson v. the Federal Housing Finance Agency was filed this month by three shareholders who want the court to vacate the third amendment to the preferred stock purchase agreement and declare the structure of the Federal Housing Finance Agency unconstitutional.According to court documents, the trio is looking to challenge “both past and ongoing abuses of power by a federal agency that operates wholly outside of the system of limited and divided government established by the constitution.”

The Missouri Court of Appeals recently reversed a judgment that was in favor of Fannie Mae in a case the GSE brought against a couple who purchased a foreclosed property. The disagreement about the property, purchased by Harvey and Christine Pace in 2002, centers on who owns the title to the home. At the time of the home purchase, the property’s seller lived out of state and executed a special warranty deed conveying the property to the Paces. But the promissory note to purchase the home only identified the husband as borrower because the wife did not sign the note or the deed of trust.

The extended deadline for input on the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s GSE ‘duty-to-serve plans closed last week with about a dozen comments, including one from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Some commenters were concerned that the evaluation guidance may be too light when it comes to promoting real impact. The proposed guidance was released in January to communicate the FHFA’s expectations on developing and evaluating the GSEs’ three-year underserved market plans. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulator issued an RFI to get feedback from the industry on how the agencies will evaluate the plans. One of the methods is to annually produce a rating for each GSE’s implementation and impact on each of the three underserved markets, including...

Eight national housing and civil rights groups joined forces and penned a letter to lawmakers urging them to oppose any legislative efforts that would do away with the GSEs’ affordable housing goals. The letter was sent to Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Chair Mike Crapo, R-ID, and ranking member Sherrod Brown, D-OH, last week, in response to recent recommendations to eliminate affordable housing goals as part of moving housing finance reform legislation forward.“This misguided attempt is not new and it would harm creditworthy borrowers who cannot access the mortgage credit they desire,” said the organizations, which include the Center for Responsible Lending, National Fair Housing Alliance and National Urban League.

In an unusual twist, the Federal Housing Finance Agency included legislative recommendations in its annual report to Congress submitted this week. First, the agency urged lawmakers to take up housing-finance reform legislation, a call FHFA Director Mel Watt has made numerous times, including in a recent hearing on Capitol Hill. The regulator declined to address any of the major policy issues that would arise from comprehensive reform, as it has in the past.The FHFA also reiterated suggestions that Congress address statutory provisions that inhibit the ability of certain investors, such as real estate investment trusts, from participating in credit-risk transfer transactions.

Mortgage repurchases and indemnifications on loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac surged higher in the first quarter of 2017, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis of disclosure reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sellers repurchased or indemnified the GSEs for losses on $238.6 million of home loans during the first three months of the year. That was up 15.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2016. But it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of single-family business Fannie and Freddie do. In 2015, for example, the two GSEs issued $824.76 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities.

First-time homebuyers have fueled a surge in home sales in the last two years, and the trend is continuing into 2017, according to a new report on the first-time homebuyer market from Genworth Mortgage Insurance. The report focused on mortgage origination data from more than 20 million first-time homebuyers over the past 24 years, with some interesting findings. Approximately 85 percent of the overall increase in home sales over the past two years was...