Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives will take home significantly less compensation during 2012, even as staffers at the taxpayer-subsidized companies will be monetarily rewarded for hitting performance goals – though they won’t be called bonuses – under a new plan unveiled late last week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The FHFA’s 2012 executive compensation program reduces top executive pay at the government-sponsored enterprises by nearly 75 percent from pre-conservatorship levels, while it totally eliminates bonuses and establishes a “six-figure” pay target for the executive positions...

Mortgage lenders appeared to have no problem taking up the slack after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac high-cost loan limits were lowered in the fourth quarter of 2011. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae financed 36.6 percent of the loans exceeding $417,000 that were originated in the fourth quarter of last year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. That was down from a 42.7 percent agency share of the jumbo market in the previous quarter. The key factor was the reduction in the top Fannie/Freddie loan limit from $729,750 to $625,500, which (Includes two data charts)...

The mortgage servicer American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. recently announced a name change to Homeward Residential, reflecting its entrance into the correspondent and warehouse lending market in October 2011. AHMS ranked 18th on a list of top mortgage servicers in 2011 compiled by affiliated publication Inside Mortgage Finance. The company serviced $69.02 billion in residential mortgages at the end of 2011, down 9.7 percent from the year before, with most of its business in non-agency mortgages. The company plans to complete its rebranding as Homeward Residential by the second quarter of 2012. The business...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of Inspector General took the FHFA to task this week for what the OIG considers the agency’s lax supervision of Freddie Mac’s relationship with its servicers. Specifically, the FHFA has not clearly defined its role regarding servicers, sufficiently coordinated with other federal banking agencies about risks and supervisory concerns with individual servicers, or timely addressed emerging risks presented by mortgage servicing contractors.

Discover Financial Services is a few months away from having a residential mortgage component to augment its direct-to-consumer banking business model, thanks to its pending acquisition of LendingTree, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tree.com Inc., for approximately $55.9 million. LendingTree, otherwise known as Home Loan Center, originates and processes residential mortgages in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with the intent to sell them in the secondary market. Loans held for sale consist primarily of residential first mortgage loans that are secured by residential real...

The outlook for the private mortgage insurers remains grim as MI companies continued reporting significant operating losses in 2011 and, unless positive factors come into play by mid-2012, time may soon run out for the sector, according to a Standard & Poor’s analysis. As the U.S. economy struggles in recovery, little hope remains for mortgage insurers to begin reporting operating profits by the end of this year, said S&P senior credit analyst Ron Joas. Sluggish employment growth and the depressed housing market have resulted in more delinquencies that pose further...(Includes one data chart)

A month after Congress voted to curtail bonus payments conferred to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives, lawmakers have yet to close the deal and send a final bill to the president’s desk for signature. In early February, both the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, which would bar members of Congress and congressional staff from using non-public, inside information for private gain. While the House version of the STOCK Act is weaker than the Senate’s, both versions retained an amendment sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-AZ and Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, to prohibit Fannie and Freddie executives from receiving multi-million dollar bonuses while the GSEs remain in federal conservatorship.

Fannie Mae said last week that it acted first to end its existing mortgage loan delivery contract with Bank of America because of delays in resolving repurchase issues. The GSE’s account in its quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission is at odds with BofA’s announcement two weeks ago where the bank announced in its own SEC filing that it has stopped selling to Fannie due to “increasingly inconsistent” repurchase requests by the enterprise compared to past practice.