Concerns have begun to mount for the Senate housing-finance reform draft proposal being developed by Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN, as the Center for Responsible Lending and National Urban League warned the plan would cost more and deliver less. The groups published a new research paper on March 1 outlining how the proposed legislation would be a blow to affordable housing by replacing current public interest mandates with “weak incentives.”“A doubtful structure of guarantors awarded unenforceable duties is simply not in our nation’s best interest. Nor is supporting systemic changes that omit community banks, credit unions, and other small lenders,” said Mike Calhoun, CRL’s president.
Economists and real estate executives warn that getting rid of the GSEs’ affordable housing goals, as suggested in some housing-finance reform proposals, will most likely lead to fewer options for underserved borrowers. Currently, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have affordable housing goals that work in tandem to their duty-to-serve underserved markets mandates. But a draft reform proposal by Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN, would replace the affordable housing goals with a new fee-based incentive system.“A potential reduction in federal backing for home loans issued to underserved borrowers as a result of ongoing GSE reform efforts is likely to decrease lending in these communities,” said...
CRT Market Better Able to Warn of Downturn. The credit-risk transfer market created in recent years by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is better poised to warn of systemic risk than the MBS market was prior to the financial crisis, according to new research by Susan Wachter of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The Wharton professor noted that the future structure of the housing-finance market, in particular the number of issuers of government-backed MBS, may change how the CRT market functions.A multiple-guarantor model, with each offering its own CRT deals, may be less liquid than the current market with just two issuers, Wachter suggested. Fannie Hires New Communications VP. Fannie Mae has hired Duncan Burns as vice president of...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders who are contesting the government’s net worth sweep may have few options left now that the Supreme Court of the United States has rejected their plea for appeal of lower court rulings that went against them.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reduced their combined mortgage portfolios to $484.2 billion during the fourth quarter of 2017, according to an Inside MBS & ABS analysis.
A few years back, Pinto and AEI unveiled a new mortgage product called the Wealth Building Home Loan, which was intended to provide an affordable mortgage option for low- and middle-income borrowers.
The share price of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac common has taken a nosedive since the fall, dropping by almost 50 percent, while leaving speculators twisting in the wind and sitting on potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The reason for the slow but steady decline is hardly surprising: Reform of the government-sponsored enterprises by legislators appears to be a long shot at this point. Moreover, there’s increasing talk in Washington that an “administrative solution” to ...
RSS