One mortgage insurance lobbyist, when informed of the possibility, called it “great news” while two lenders we interviewed said it was an awful development…
United Shore Financial Services was the top seller of broker loans by a wide margin, with $5.83 billion in fourth-quarter activity, more than twice its nearest competitor…
Although the question of when the conservatorship status of the GSEs will be resolved is still up in the air, a new administration has many speculating that change is on the horizon for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The November election gave Republicans both houses of Congress and the executive branch. This seemed to lend itself to more talks on when and how to reform the GSEs as they approach close to a decade in conservatorship. But, while the sentiment to do something is apparent, agreeing on the best path forward is a different story. And, as in the past, there is no shortage of competing thought processes and proposals.
With increased talk of privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Investors Unite wants reassurance that shareholders will be treated fairly. The GSE shareholders rights trade group said, “Now everybody is talking about ending the conservatorship,” in a recent blog posting. While that may be an exaggeration, since the presidential election there has been a renewed interest in bringing the GSEs out of its eight-plus years conservatorship, where they’ve been since September 2008. Recent talks began with and snowballed after Treasury-secretary designee Steve Mnuchin said that getting the GSEs out of government control would be a top priority for the new presidential administration. And Mnuchin said that he plans to do this “reasonably fast.”
Fannie Mae invited several real estate investors to its first quarterly meeting of the year this month to discuss single-family rental loans. Tom Wilson of Wilson Investment Properties and Bruce Norris of the Norris Group attended and spoke from the investor’s perspective on single-family rental loans, which have become harder to obtain since the housing downturn. Wilson said that as a result it’s been more difficult for investors and landlords to be “economically motivated” to provide sufficient housing. Discussions at the meeting with the two California-based real estate investors centered on Fannie’s limit on the number of loans to a...
Fannie Mae is eliminating the mortgage-backed securities call-in requirement in preparation for the upcoming integration with the Common Securitization Platform. The change is part of several modifications to the GSE’s investor reporting requirements that servicers must implement by Feb. 1 when reporting borrower activity. The GSE referred to the MBS call-in as a “non-industry standard and redundant practice” that requires servicers to report their monthly pool balances for MBS swaps and loan activity data reports. In addition to preparing servicers for when Fannie integrates with the CSP, the change will help simplify policies and procedures. “Fannie Mae can rely on existing loan level data from servicers to drive security balance processing. Servicers will no longer have...
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