Antonio Weiss, counselor to the secretary of the Treasury Department, cautioned that any reduction to the corporate tax rate could prompt a draw from Treasury funds by the GSEs.
The evolution of the agency mortgage-servicing market isn’t over, though it appears to have settled into a long-term transition by attrition. At the end of 2016, depository institutions serviced some $3.584 trillion of single-family home loans committed to mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. That was down 1.0 percent from September, a period during which the supply of agency MBS debt outstanding was growing. The depository share of agency MBS servicing fell...[Includes two data tables]
Legislative reform of the government-sponsored enterprises doesn’t appear to be a high priority for Republican lawmakers, but President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to reduce the corporate tax rate could inadvertently prompt some GSE reform activity, according to industry analysts. As of the end of the third quarter of 2016, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had a combined $53.80 billion in deferred tax assets. The DTAs result from differences between the carrying amounts of existing assets and liabilities under generally accepted accounting principles and their respective tax bases. The DTAs are...
Thanks to stellar fourth quarter MBS issuance – coupled with higher interest rates at Dec. 31 – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are likely to report their best quarterly earnings of 2016, money that will go directly into the U.S. Treasury. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance this week, the general consensus among observers is that the two government-sponsored enterprises will post a combined profit north of $5.5 billion. In 2016, the two guaranteed...
One mortgage insurance lobbyist, when informed of the possibility, called it “great news” while two lenders we interviewed said it was an awful development…