A tiny portion of loans sold into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities trigger a buyback demand from either of the GSEs, and in most cases lenders are able to avoid an actual repurchase or indemnification. Lenders repurchased or provided other indemnification for $260.12 million of home loans during the third quarter of 2017, a 6.4 percent increase from the prior period, according to an Inside The GSEs analysis of quarterly disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission. During the same period, Fannie and Freddie issued $223.6 billion of new single-family MBS. The third-quarter spike in buyback activity came all on the Freddie side of the market.

In roughly 30 days, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will see their capital buffers fall to zero, an event that has GOP legislators working feverishly over the past several weeks to come up with housing-finance reform legislation. In short, Republicans fear that in the event of a quarterly loss by one or both GSEs next year, these massive mortgage giants might need to tap a line of credit they have with the U.S. Treasury, which would result in another “taxpayer bailout” of the two. And since Republicans are in charge of both chambers of Congress, as well as the White House, they would get blamed. At least that’s how the situation was explained to Inside The GSEs.

As the end of the year nears, there’s been talk this week about negotiations underway between the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Trump administration to address the capital situation at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Although no one is confirming the discussion, a Bloomberg report quoted an anonymous source as saying that FHFA officials want Fannie and Freddie each to keep a capital buffer of $2 billion to $3 billion on their books. In return, the report said, the administration wants to limit the GSEs’ activity in the market by tightening restrictions on the type of loans they buy. In late 2013, former FHFA Acting Director Ed DeMarco proposed implementing a loan size limit on...

In anticipation of a slight decline in multifamily mortgage originations, the Federal Housing Finance Agency last week lowered the multifamily lending caps for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2018. GSE multifamily business will be capped at $35.0 billion, down from the $36.5 billion level it’s been the past two years. FHFA analyzes the multifamily loan origination market size each quarter to decide if it will adjust the GSEs’ purchase limits. In the event the market picks up in 2018, the agency could raise the cap. And if the market slows even more than expected, it could lower the caps further.

Fannie Mae’s board chairman and the mayor of Atlanta are in a heated dispute over roughly 100 acres of vacant land that the city said was supposed to serve the low-income population. In fact, Mayor Kasim Reed is suing Egbert Perry and has asked him to step down from his position as non-executive chairman of Fannie’s board. Perry, co-founder and CEO of the Integral Group, joined the GSE’s board in late 2008, and has been chair since 2014. He says he hasn’t done anything wrong. The argument stems from what the mayor calls a “secret deal” made with Integral in 2011 by Renee Glover, the former president and CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority, who now serves on Fannie’s board.

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.