The Federal Housing Finance Agency extended the response deadline on its “request for input” on the credit risk-transfer program. The response period will now close on Oct. 13, 2016, instead of Aug. 29.The FHFA extended it by 45 days because various industry stakeholders said they wanted more time to evaluate the information and questions raised in the RFI. Back in June, the FHFA asked for industry feedback on various aspects of its CRT program. Fannie Mae’s Connecticut Avenue Securities program and Freddie Mac’s Structured Agency Credit Risk program have accounted for the bulk of GSE risk-transfer activity since the program was launched three years ago.

A personal relationship between Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos and Heather Russell, the chief legal officer for Fifth Third Bancorp, caused the bank to terminate its top lawyer because of conflict of interest concerns. Both Mayopoulos and Russell are separated from their spouses, and both revealed the relationship to their respective companies. “Mr. Mayopoulos previously disclosed the relationship to Fannie Mae’s Office of Compliance and Ethics. The Office of Compliance and Ethics provided appropriate direction to Mr. Mayopoulos, and he followed it,” according to a spokesman for Fannie. “Further, Mr. Mayopoulos has no involvement in Fannie Mae’s relationship with Fifth Third Bank. Quite simply, there is no conflict of interest under Fannie Mae’s corporate policies,” said the spokesman.

Freddie Mac recently formed a Manufactured Housing Initiative Task Force as the result of manufactured housing advocates pushing for greater support from the GSEs, especially in the form of chattel lending. The group met for the first time in late July in Reston, VA. The meeting came after a comment letter from the Manufactured Housing Institute on the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s duty-to-serve rule, which was followed by an invitation from MHI to discuss chattel loans at an MHI meeting in May. In December, the FHFA issued a proposed rule to implement the “duty-to-serve” provisions included in the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.

Fannie Mae has re-claimed some lost market share in the prized first-time homebuyer market during the first half of 2016, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis and ranking. Fannie securitized $41.70 billion of first-time buyer purchase loans in the first six months of this year. That represented 28.4 percent of the total FTHB business securitized by the three agencies, up from 27.8 percent for all of last year. Freddie Mac, however, is still playing catch-up. The GSE accounted for 17.0 percent of the agency FTHB market, compared to 17.8 percent in 2015. The top securitizer of first-timer loans remained Ginnie Mae, with a 54.6 percent share of the sector.

While the homeownership rate for people 25 to 34 years old remains well below the levels seen for that age group before the financial crisis, analysts at Fannie Mae note that the homeownership rate for millennials is starting to increase. Fannie defined millennials as those born between 1981 and 2000. Patrick Simmons, director of strategic planning in Fannie’s economic and strategic research group, turned to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to ...

While holders of mortgage servicing rights have taken large writedowns in recent quarters due to declines in interest rates, New Residential Investment has managed to report relatively large profits. New Residential had $68.65 million in net income attributable to common stockholders in the second quarter of 2016, down from $111.74 million the previous quarter and $75.12 million in the second quarter of 2015. New Residential held $1.36 billion in excess MSRs ...

With federal civil monetary penalties set to rise significantly over the next couple of months, mortgage industry stakeholders are getting increasingly concerned about retroactivity in some of the interim final rules adopted by federal agencies to implement the revised penalty amounts, according to industry attorneys. Although application of the adjusted civil penalty amounts to violations that occurred prior to the passage of the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment ...

With residential origination costs constantly rising, should rank-and-file loan officers worry that their jobs will eventually be automated away thanks to advances in technology? The thinking goes like this: Lenders are spending hundreds of million dollars a year in software upgrades to automate as many LO functions as they can. The ultimate goal is to reduce the number of loan officers and whittle down costs. Depending on where they work, mortgage loan officers can earn ...

The mortgage lending industry continues to lag behind the level at which proponents of electronic mortgages – otherwise known as eMortgages – think lenders should be in adopting the technology. A recent survey by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reveals that there are still plenty of obstacles across a range of issues and pain points. “We found that eMortgage adoption continues to gain traction with lenders; however, the adoption has been slow due to ...