Despite rumors to the contrary, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac forked over most of their fourth-quarter earnings to the Treasury Department at the end of March, as scheduled. But some industry insiders wonder whether the timing of future payments will be altered to reduce the likelihood that either of the government-sponsored enterprises might need another bailout. In early March, there were talks predicting, or hoping for everything from a possible suspension of the Treasury sweep to replacing the quarterly payment with an annual one. Speculation may have been fueled by uncertainty about what the Trump administration wants to do about the now eight-year-old conservatorships of the two GSEs. In 2017, Fannie and Freddie can only retain...

Fink is expected to leave Fannie Mae in the second half of the year.

One GSE watcher called it, "The biggest company quarterly profit since the Roman Empire, adjusted for inflation of course.”

Whether a potential homebuyer has a bachelor’s degree plays a significant role in the applicant’s ability to obtain a mortgage, according to research funded by Fannie Mae. The analysis suggests that the higher-education variable wasn’t much of a factor before the financial crisis, but a borrower’s level of education is a factor in post-crisis originations. Researchers at the University of Southern California probed data from a survey of households conducted by the Survey Research Center at ...

GSE originators have long complained that the rep-and-warrant policies need to be more transparent.

How much slack can the purchase market pick up? We’re about to find out…

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw substantial declines in new single-family business during the first quarter of 2017, but the purchase-mortgage side showed some life in March, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside Mortgage Finance. The two government-sponsored enterprises guaranteed $218.22 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the first three months of the year. That was down 27.1 percent from the fourth quarter total of $299.25 billion – the biggest quarterly flow in GSE business since the second quarter of 2013. The refinance market was...[Includes three data tables]

Most lenders are usually shy when asked whether they would like to go public. But not Better Mortgage, a barely one-year-old “digital” mortgage lender that could triple loan production this year to $1.5 billion. “Yes, we’d like to go public,” company founder and CEO Vishal Garg told Inside MortgageFinance. “This company should be owned by the public.” As for when, that’s a different matter. The last time a nonbank mortgage lender sold...

Freddie Mac is set to implement a waiver aimed at reducing lender anxiety about potential buybacks related to appraisal issues, matching a similar policy already implemented by Fannie Mae. The initiatives by the two government-sponsored enterprises are aimed at one of the last major bugaboos in the representations and warranties lenders take on when they sell loans. Lender repurchases have declined dramatically over the past few years as Fannie and Freddie cleaned up buyback disputes related to loans originated before the housing market collapse. In 2016, lender repurchases and other indemnifications fell...

We've an opinion or two from mortgage lobbyists that Rep. Hensarling might be open to some type of government guaranty on MBS, but how he might agree to such an animal has yet to be revealed…