Frustrated by inaction on housing finance reform, a dozen conservative organizations led by the National Taxpayers Union called on Congress to begin recapitalizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The coalition of center-right organizations urged Congress to pass H.R. 4913, the “Housing Finance Restructuring Act of 2016.” They said the Treasury sweep of the government-sponsored enterprises’ profits implemented in 2012 has “jeopardized” the financial system and taxpayers. “If there is one thing this presidential campaign has revealed, it is...
When Freddie recently unveiled a first-quarter loss due to hedges affected by falling interest rates, MBA chief Dave Stevens issued a statement once again calling for Congress to enact housing-finance reform, but said nothing about the issue of zero capital.
“The QM rule needs to stand on its own two feet … The FHFA should not be in charge of setting national mortgage underwriting,” said MBA chief Dave Stevens.
Fannie Mae’s Economic & Strategic Research Group surveyed senior mortgage executives earlier this year and confirmed that lenders are still facing challenges in complying with the CFPB’s integrated disclosure rule known as TRID, according to new findings released by the government-sponsored enterprise last week. The controversial rule integrates the consumer disclosure requirements under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. According to Sheila Teimourian, vice president and deputy counsel at Fannie, more than three-quarters of the lenders surveyed indicated that the two biggest challenges were managing or coordinating with third-party technology vendors and communicating with key players, such as the buyer, seller and loan officer. About eight in 10 of those who cited coordinating with ...
Freddie Mac CEO Donald Layton said in a phone interview with Inside The GSEs last week that the phrase “front-end risk sharing” is not well understood. He said almost all of the credit-risk transfer transactions can be referred to as front end because the terms are front end. “The risk-transfer mechanism is back end, the risk-transfer arrangement is front end,” he said. “If the loan comes to us and is put in one of our mortgage-backed securities, it is in fact a back-end risk transfer,” he said, explaining that if the loan goes bad the owner of the MBS takes the loss and looks to...
Marketplace lender Social Finance this month received seller/servicer approvals from Fannie Mae, but it remains to be seen just how active it will be in the secondary mortgage market. According to a spokesman for the privately held “SoFi,” the nonbank is now funding roughly $100 million per month in non-agency jumbos. According to firms that have done business with SoFi, it has sold the loans to OneWest Bank and Wells Fargo. To date, the online lender has yet to issue any ...