The House Financial Services Committee this week approved legislation that would allow the White House to fire the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency at will and allow Congress to set the agency’s annual budget. Those provisions are included in the CHOICE Act, a Republican bill that would make sweeping changes to the Dodd-Frank Act. While the legislation is expected eventually to be cleared by the full House on a partisan vote, its fate in the Senate is murkier. FHFA Director Mel Watt’s term as chief regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ends...
The FHFA was created in part because its predecessor, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, was widely seen as lacking enough independence to adequately oversee the GSEs...
One of the objectives in resolving the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be minimizing the risk of market disruption in transitioning to the replacement system, according to industry executives. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest proposal for fixing the two government-sponsored enterprises is largely predicated on recent developments in the GSE world, including the first stage of the common securitization platform, extensive product standardization between the two, and the rapid acceptance of credit-risk transfer structures. Those are...
Six months ago, New Residential Mortgage didn’t own any mortgage servicing rights, though it was active in the market as a buyer of excess servicing and in other forms. It ended March 2017 as the sixth-largest servicer in the industry, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking, and that is probably some kind of record. New Residential reported owned MSR on $252.0 billion of mostly Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pools at the end of the first quarter. During the first three months of the year, it acquired $92.5 billion of servicing from CitiMortgage and smaller chunks from United Shore, Residential Credit Solutions and Walter/Ditech. Its reported first-quarter total appears to include a $67.0 billion buy from PHH Mortgage that has not yet closed. In addition, New Residential held...[Includes two data tables]
Freddie Mac continued to make a profit in the first three months of 2017 but its net income slipped to $2.2 billion, a 54.2 percent sequential decline from the previous quarter, according to the government-sponsored enterprise’s earnings statement published this week. The GSE attributed the decline to a reduction in market-related gains with interest rates and spreads remaining steady. There were fewer refinance transactions, and non-cash hedging gains disappeared during the quarter. Freddie’s core business of collecting guarantee fees continued...
Perhaps the new Treasury secretary finally looked at the numbers, realizing that Fannie and Freddie – wards of the government since September 2008 – forked over roughly $20 billion to Uncle Sam…
Since the fall of 2008, Treasury has controlled the senior preferred stock in Freddie and Fannie, making the U.S. government the de facto owner of the two - and the linchpin to the housing and mortgage markets.
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