The Federal Communications Commission is seeking feedback on a petition filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency regarding the ability of mortgage servicers to contact borrowers in natural disaster areas.The FHFA petition is in reference to stipulations based on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. With three major hurricanes this fall, the FHFA said there’s a need for mortgage servicers to quickly contact borrowers whether by voice or automated messages. The agency filed the petition in hopes of getting a speedy response to two requests. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulator wants the FCC to declare that borrowers who are affected by disasters are considered to have given their consent to receive calls from their mortgage servicers.
During the second quarter of 2017, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac transferred credit risk on $12.6 billion of unpaid principal balance loans through front-end lender risk sharing, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s latest credit-risk transfer progress report. While the GSEs have plans to grow front-end deals, they currently represent a small portion of the total $212.8 billion risk transferred during the second quarter. Lender risk sharing lets lenders invest directly in credit risk by retaining a portion of the credit risk on loans they originate or service. Lender risk sharing accounted for 5 percent of the GSEs’ $6.4 billion risk in force.
The Seventh Circuit Court recently reversed an earlier decision that held buyers purchasing property in Chicago from Fannie Mae were liable for state and local transfer taxes. The case involved real property transfer taxes imposed in 2013 and 2014 on purchasers who argued they were legally exempt from having to pay. The Illinois Department of Finance assessed the buyers for the tax. But since the property was purchased from a federal agency, the buyers believed they were exempt from having to pay. The buyers and Fannie then both sued the City of Chicago and asked the federal court to review the finance department’s decision.
Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos said the housing crisis has made people cautious about buying a home and that confidence in the market needs to be restored. Speaking at the Detroit Economic Club last week, Mayopoulos emphasized the need for affordable housing, calling the issue “urgent.” More than one million starter homes have been lost since the crisis, according to Mayopoulos. He pointed out that from 2012 and 2015, the most affordable one-third of homes rose 38 percent in price, and the inventory dropped by 39 percent. In addition to the decline in the number of affordable homes, he said people aren’t as comfortable in making a home purchase as they were before the crisis.
The credit-risk transfer programs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suggest that the two government-sponsored enterprises are charging MBS guarantee fees that are somewhat higher than market ex-pectations, according to a new Federal Housing Finance Agency report.
Mick Mulvaney has been in charge of the CFPB all week and we’ve yet to hear one prediction that subprime mortgage lending will revive with a vengeance…
Jumbo mortgage production was up 9.6 percent in the third quarter, a slightly faster growth rate than the 8.8 percent increase in first-lien originations during that period, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance.
The conforming loan limit for one-unit properties in 2018 will be $453,100, according to an an-nouncement this week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The limit for mortgages eligible to be delivered to the government-sponsored enterprises increased by 6.8 percent from the current limit.
As the calendar winds down on 2017, staffers for Sens. Robert Corker, R-TN, and Mark Warner, D-VA, are busy working on housing-finance reform legislation, showing their progress, thus far, to a small group of industry insiders, Inside Mortgage Finance has learned.
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