The National Fair Housing Alliance filed a housing discrimination lawsuit against Fannie Mae for allegedly not properly maintaining real estate-owned properties in 38 metropolitan areas with high proportions of African-Americans and Latinos.The lawsuit was filed this week in the federal district court in San Francisco. Fannie denies the allegations. According to the NFHA and 20 local fair housing groups across the country, Fannie purposely does not maintain its foreclosed properties in middle- and working-class minority neighborhoods to the same level of quality it does for foreclosures it owns in comparable white neighborhoods. Foreclosed properties in minority communities were littered with debris and trash, marked by graffiti...

The share of borrowers who want to use a mobile device as part of the mortgage shopping and origination process has increased significantly in the past year, according to survey results from Fannie Mae. The demand for mortgage-related activities completed via cell phones should prompt action from lenders, according to Steve Deggendorf, a director of market insights research at Fannie. “Lenders such as Quicken and Sofi have already begun to reflect the mobile demands of ...

Fannie Mae closed on the sale of three of its buildings in Washington, DC, last week, including the iconic headquarters. The 1958 Williamsburg-style building sold for $89 million. Roadside Development, a private commercial real estate firm, along with the North American unit of Sekisui House, a large Japanese homebuilder, bought the 228,000-square-foot property situated on 10-acres of land. Roadside is known for its adaptive reuse of commercial properties. While speculation points to the possibility of the developer building condominiums and retail space on the site at 3900 Wisconsin Ave., said a spokeswoman for the developer. “Roadside Development plans to collaborate with the community on the parcel’s vision...

To streamline the mortgage process Freddie Mac recently approved a handful of mortgage vendors that sellers/servicers can use to have promissory note documents digitally signed. The mortgage industry has been behind when it comes to utilizing technology but Freddie is hoping to expedite the process by publishing a list of pre-approved eMortgage vendors. The list highlights vendors that have met its minimum functional, legal and security review requirements for creating, signing and storing electronic promissory notes. These eNotes detail the repayment obligation of the borrower to the lender. While sellers typically don’t need special approval to use electronic documents as long as their procedures meet the GSEs’ requirements, Samuel Oliver III, vice president of transformation management for the single-family business at...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently requested to withdraw from the Ireland and Luxembourg markets, citing increased regulation that’s almost impossible for certain companies to comply with. Freddie asked that its debt and mortgage securities and Structured Agency Credit Risk debt notes be delisted from those two markets in the European Union on Nov. 30.  …

Two pending mortgage lawsuits involving the Federal Housing Finance Agency, spawned by the housing crisis, have been winding down in recent weeks. One includes a win for Bank of America and the other includes oral arguments in an appeal by Nomura Holdings and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Department of Justice had until Nov. 21 to appeal an earlier ruling in which BofA, defending practices of Countrywide Financial, got out of having to pay more than $1 billion in penalties to the FHFA. Instead of appealing to the Supreme Court, the DOJ quietly let the deadline slip away. In 2014, a federal judge ordered the bank to pay $1.2 billion in civil penalties.

DU Day 1 Certainty Begins. On Dec.10 components of Fannie Mae’s Day 1 Certainty initiative become effective. Day 1, announced in October, gives customers freedom from representation and warranties on key aspects of the mortgage origination process through Fannie’s Desktop Underwriter platform. Asset and employment validation as well as Collateral Underwriter freedom from reps and warrants for appraisals begins Dec. 10. Fannie Prices Latest CAS CRT Deal. Last week, Fannie Mae priced its latest credit risk sharing transaction under its Connecticut Avenue Securities program. CAS Series 2016-C07, a $701.7 million note offering, was scheduled to settle on Dec. 8, 2016.

With rates rising almost 75 basis points since the election, more MSR packages should hit the market in the next few weeks.

Have any of the GSE stock speculators that bought on the cheap cashed out of their gains?

The one weak spot in the mortgage market during the third quarter was in traditional jumbo originations, a trend that was reinforced by a significant increase in production of agency mortgages in high-cost markets that exceeded $417,000. An estimated $101.0 billion of non-agency jumbo home loans were originated during the third quarter, down 1.9 percent from the previous quarter. At the same time, production of conforming-jumbo mortgages – loans greater than $417,000 that were securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae – jumped 27.7 percent from the second to the third quarter. Some of the disparity is...[Includes three data tables]