FHFA 2017 Multifamily Lending Caps Unchanged: The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that the 2017 multifamily lending caps for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will remain at the same level they were for 2016. Each will be subject to a cap of $36.5 billion of multifamily purchase volume. The FHFA expects the multifamily finance market to be roughly the same as it was in 2016. Fannie Bans Plywood in Foreclosures. Fannie Mae recently banned the use of plywood to secure vacant homes. Beginning early this month Fannie property foreclosures must be secured by a plywood alternative, such as clear boarding.
With potential increases in loan production on the horizon, Freddie Mac introduced a pilot program aimed at getting more mortgage lenders prepared to originate manufactured housing loans and buyers prepared to purchase them. The GSE will partner with Next Step Network, a nonprofit specializing in manufactured home purchases, and eHome America, an online home counseling company, to implement the curriculum. One of the goals of the initiative is to foster new relationships with active participants in the manufactured housing industry. This includes national and local mortgage lenders.Next Step is based in Kentucky, a state heavy in manufactured housing. Freddie said the partnership with Next Step will educate prospective buyers of...
The GSEs’ credit-risk sharing program has expanded over the years but not everyone has been fond of the transactions designed to transfer risk away from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Tim Howard, a former Fannie CFO, has become one of the program’s biggest critics. He said today’s credit-risk transfer program, mandated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, removes the “normal economic discipline” of a company making its own decisions about which risks to keep and which ones to share, and on what terms. He said that the CRT transactions being done today are nothing like those done during his time at Fannie, before the start of the conservatorship.
The GSEs have sold more than 59,629 nonperforming loans through August 2016, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s second report this year highlighting the activity of nonperforming loan sales and borrower outcomes. That number is up from the 41,649 NPLs that were sold through May 2016. The report, released last week, is part of the FHFA’s plans to make NPL sales data more transparent. The agency released its inaugural report in July and plans on publishing two each year. The latest report shows that the NPLs had a total unpaid principal balance of $11.9 billion, were delinquent 3.4 years on average and had an average current loan-to-value ratio of 97 percent.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s strategic plan for the GSEs reflects a shift in priorities that has created more uncertainty. The GAO said the regulator revised the wording of the goals in the 2014 plan to align it more closely with FHFA’s statutory responsibilities. In the absence of an official post-conservatorship plan for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the GAO was asked to examine the FHFA’s actions as conservator in a report highlighting the objectives needed for the future of the two companies after the conservatorship. The report noted that the FHFA increased its emphasis on maintaining credit availability and foreclosure prevention options, shifted away from...
RSS