Who at the GSEs (or at the Federal Housing Finance Agency) was responsible for telling Fannie and Freddie to set aside so much money for loan losses and were those assumptions way off base?
Fannie Mae has signed a definitive agreement to buy $10.3 billion of mostly delinquent mortgage servicing rights from Citigroup for an undisclosed sum. Roughly 64,000 Fannie-backed loans are involved in the transaction. The GSE confirmed the sale last week. It plans to transfer the receivables to one of its specialty servicers, but declined to say which one. It has about five, including the IBM-owned Seterus and Walter Investment.
FHFA Launches ‘Servicing Project’ to Watch Counterparty Risk. The Federal Housing Finance Agency has launched what industry officials have labeled “a servicing project” to keep an eye on all large servicing sales where the underlying collateral is guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Sources briefed on the effort said the FHFAis now officially asking that the GSEs get agency approval for any sales of mortgage servicing rights where 25,000 or more in loans are being transferred. This translates into deal sizes of at least $5 billion.
Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s home-retention activity declined for the most part during the third quarter of 2013, according to a new analysis of Federal Housing Finance Agency data by Inside The GSEs. Total loss mitigation activity – total home-retention efforts and foreclosure activities combined – declined 8.3 percent during the third quarter to 152,101 and was down 21.3 percent from a year-ago.
Flagstar, which ranks eighth among all originators according to Inside Mortgage Finance, funded $6.4 billion of home mortgages in 4Q, a 17 percent decline from the prior period.
Some of the largest bank owners of mortgage servicing rights are lining up to sell small- and medium-sized chunks of their portfolios in what likely will turn out to be a record year for sales. Bank of America – which unloaded several huge packages last year – is now in the market with an $8 billion Ginnie Mae MSR portfolio. Wells Fargo late this week confirmed that it will sell a $39 billion package of servicing rights backed by non-agency loans to Ocwen Financial Corp., and hinted that more deals are ahead. An industry advisor who works the servicing market told...
Comments made Wednesday by the Treasury Department’s point man on GSE reform, Michael Stegman, did not go unnoticed by employees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In terms of market effect, a DocuTech executive said that because of the new CFPB rules, "credit is going to slow down for a little while, maybe a month or so."
One servicing advisor told IMFnews that the regulator “now has the last word on all MSR transfer approvals. It began in December and has slowed the process a bit.”
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