Fannie Mae this week, in partnership with “fintech” lender SoFi, rolled out a new cash-out refinance mortgage aimed at borrowers who want to tap home equity to pay down their college loans. According to interviews with Fannie officials, the rollout is driven by cutting guaranty fees that usually accompany Fannie Mae cash-out mortgages. Fannie’s average g-fee on new business was...

The government-sponsored enterprises are well on their way to trimming their retained mortgage portfolios to less than $250.0 billion each by the start of 2018. As of the end of the third quarter, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had a combined mortgage portfolio of $615.65 billion, down 3.3 percent from June. While Freddie historically had the larger retained holdings, the two portfolios are now roughly equal. Under the current terms of their conservatorship, Fannie and Freddie are required...[Includes one data table]

Are mortgage account executives overpaid?

Many industry experts are advising Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to expand so-called front-end approaches to credit-risk transfers that have so far relied heavily on structured debt notes and reinsurance contracts arranged long after loans are sold to the two government-sponsored enterprises. In a comment letter filed with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Redwood Trust suggested that “a more robust front-end CRT program [should] at least match the volume of back-end transactions.” Through the end of September, Fannie and Freddie have issued $35.88 billion of back-end debt notes covering $1.223 trillion of single-family mortgages, according to Inside MBS & ABS, an affiliated newsletter. Redwood is...

After hearing lenders’ concerns about the increased reporting burden they would face from some of the changes that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac want to make to their Uniform Closing Dataset requirements, the two government-sponsored enterprises agreed to postpone the requirement to provide the seller closing data for one year. “The GSEs understand the difficulties that acquiring the seller data presents, particularly as many lenders are still working through their processes to obtain the seller closing disclosure and data from settlement companies,” the pair said late last month in letters to the Mortgage Bankers Association. “In recognition of these challenges, the GSEs have agreed...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported a combined net profit of $5.53 billion in the third quarter of 2016 with income from guarantee fees strong in both the single-family and multifamily segment. Both government-sponsored enterprises expect guarantee fee income to continue to be a driving force. Freddie’s net profit of $2.33 billion represents its strongest performance since the second quarter of 2015, when it earned $4.17 billion. Stellar g-fee income and a steep reduction in hedging losses helped contribute to that growth. Meanwhile, Fannie reported...

Fannie Mae CEO Tim Maypoulos told the press Thursday morning that he expects the GSE to remain profitable “for the foreseeable future.”

In the past, Caliber Home Loans has been mentioned as a possible buyer of other firms...

With no blockbuster mergers and a relatively subdued secondary market in mortgage servicing rights, glacial momentum continued to reshape the mortgage servicing business during the third quarter of 2016, according to new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. The two forces that have had the biggest impact over the past few years are the growth of nonbanks and the gradual deconsolidation of the servicing market. The combined portfolio of the 23 nonbanks that ranked among the top 50 servicers as of the end of the third quarter jumped 6.9 percent in just three months. The nonbank share of the $7.389 trillion serviced by the top 50 players in the market rose...[Includes two data tables]

During his career, Cotton has worked for Freddie Mac, Bank of America and Sterling Savings Bank, among others.