Shortly after being nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be his Treasury secretary, investment banker Steve Mnuchin midweek dropped a bombshell on the mortgage market: Ending the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be a top priority. For the most part, the mortgage industry cheered the news, believing that at the very least, Mnuchin would preserve the federal guaranty on existing MBS and into the future. In fact, the market seems to be betting on it. But now comes...
New production of agency single-family MBS in November was down 8.2 percent from the previous month, according to a preliminary Inside MBS & ABS analysis. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a combined $134.70 billion of single-family MBS in November, the lowest monthly total since July. A decline wasn’t unexpected: the housing market is on the downslope of its seasonal trend and rising mortgage interest rates are taking some of the steam out of the refinance market. What is a little unusual is...[Includes two data tables]
Mortgage lenders and other employers that have made or are preparing to implement changes to comply with the Department of Labor’s revised overtime pay regulations may have to reevaluate whether to hold off or go forward with those plans, according to wage and overtime experts. On Nov. 22, Judge Amos Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas granted a request by several states to block the new overtime pay rules that would have gone into effect on Dec. 1. The judge issued a preliminary injunction after determining that the DOL did not have the authority to decide whether workers should be paid overtime based on their salary level alone. Mazzant agreed...
Since the November election, mortgage rates have spiked roughly 75 basis points, promising to snuff out the refinancing market and possibly leading to a spate of industry layoffs. But so far, it appears that many firms are keeping their cost-cutting powder dry. “Application volume has been pretty much the same,” said Paul Rozo, CEO of nonbank originator Paramount Residential Mortgage Group, Corona, CA. “I think it’s too early in the game to be thinking about layoffs.” Marc Savitt, a principal in The Mortgage Center, a small West Virginia-based brokerage firm, said...
The incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump is likely a couple of months away from formal confirmation by the U.S. Senate of new cabinet officials. But at least one position has apparently been settled – that of Treasury secretary – and other names have been circulated, including that of a possible head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. At the same time, Trump has begun fleshing out the personnel that will serve on various “landing teams,” which help ease the transitions at various federal agencies. On the cabinet level, the new president has decided...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency raised the maximum conforming loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages in 2017 for the first time in a decade, but the impact on loan originations is questionable. Meanwhile, the FHA has not yet announced its 2017 loan limits. The baseline loan limit will go up for the first time since 2006, rising from $417,000 to $424,100. And the maximum high-cost loan limit for one-unit properties is climbing to $636,150, an increase of $10,650. The FHFA said that loan limits for the two government-sponsored enterprises will increase in all but 87 counties. An Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data indicates...
Warehouse providers ended the third quarter with $58.0 billion of commitments on their books, a modest improvement over the prior period and a sign that nonbanks still hunger for residential credit. Compared to the same quarter a year ago, warehouse commitments increased an impressive 23.4 percent, according to survey figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance. That’s the good news. Now comes the bad: with interest rates rising since the election, warehouse managers are voicing their concern about what may lie ahead, namely lower originations. “Right now it feels...[Includes one data table]
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