House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, called for greater accountability of the GSEs and discussed reintroducing his Dodd-Frank Act reform bill in the next Congress, during remarks in Washington last week. He said the GOP’s PATH (Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners) Act would help end the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout. The PATH Act, first introduced in 2013, proposes to phase out the GSEs within five years. In addition to ending the “costly” bailout, Hensarling said the bill would protect and restore the FHA to its defined mission, increase mortgage competition, enhance transparency, maximize consumer choice, and break down barriers to private investment capital.

The GSEs have sold more than 59,629 nonperforming loans through August 2016, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s second report this year highlighting the activity of nonperforming loan sales and borrower outcomes. That number is up from the 41,649 NPLs that were sold through May 2016. The report, released last week, is part of the FHFA’s plans to make NPL sales data more transparent. The agency released its inaugural report in July and plans on publishing two each year. The latest report shows that the NPLs had a total unpaid principal balance of $11.9 billion, were delinquent 3.4 years on average and had an average current loan-to-value ratio of 97 percent.

The GSEs’ credit-risk sharing program has expanded over the years but not everyone has been fond of the transactions designed to transfer risk away from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Tim Howard, a former Fannie CFO, has become one of the program’s biggest critics. He said today’s credit-risk transfer program, mandated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, removes the “normal economic discipline” of a company making its own decisions about which risks to keep and which ones to share, and on what terms. He said that the CRT transactions being done today are nothing like those done during his time at Fannie, before the start of the conservatorship.

With potential increases in loan production on the horizon, Freddie Mac introduced a pilot program aimed at getting more mortgage lenders prepared to originate manufactured housing loans and buyers prepared to purchase them. The GSE will partner with Next Step Network, a nonprofit specializing in manufactured home purchases, and eHome America, an online home counseling company, to implement the curriculum. One of the goals of the initiative is to foster new relationships with active participants in the manufactured housing industry. This includes national and local mortgage lenders.Next Step is based in Kentucky, a state heavy in manufactured housing. Freddie said the partnership with Next Step will educate prospective buyers of...

FHFA 2017 Multifamily Lending Caps Unchanged: The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that the 2017 multifamily lending caps for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will remain at the same level they were for 2016. Each will be subject to a cap of $36.5 billion of multifamily purchase volume. The FHFA expects the multifamily finance market to be roughly the same as it was in 2016. Fannie Bans Plywood in Foreclosures. Fannie Mae recently banned the use of plywood to secure vacant homes. Beginning early this month Fannie property foreclosures must be secured by a plywood alternative, such as clear boarding.

After much speculation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency raised the 2017 conforming loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages to $424,100. This is the first time the loan limit climbed above $417,000 in 10 years.

Fairholme Funds officials this week continued to press their case for restoring shareholder rights for private investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, expressing hope that the incoming Trump administration will be friendlier to their cause.

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th president may open a path out of conservatorship for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some investors in the two government-sponsored enterprises believe. According to interviews conducted with GSE investors, industry lobbyists, trade group officials and others, a “recap and release” plan backed by the junior preferred shareholders of Fannie and Freddie could formally be presented to the Trump administration early next year. There hasn’t...

Home prices on non-distressed properties declined in October for the second straight month, with demand from homebuyers diminishing somewhat as part of a seasonal pattern, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. Non-distressed properties sold last month had an average price of $297,300, based on a three-month moving average. That was down 1.8 percent from September and off 4.1 percent from the average price of $310,000 in August, which was the peak for the year. While prices on non-distressed properties have declined recently, prices in October were...

The baseline conforming loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will climb to $424,100 in 2017, the first such increase since 2006. The 1.7 percent increase reflected a gain in the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s expanded-data house price index at the end of the third quarter. The new ceiling for high-cost markets will...