Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both said they plan to ramp up their credit risk transfers in 2016 and explore more types of transactions. Representatives from the GSEs and FHFA spoke on a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association risk-sharing panel last week in New York. This goes in line with Fannie’s and Freddie’s recently released 2016 scorecard in which the Federal Housing Finance Agency directed the GSEs to transfer credit risk on at least 90 percent of the unpaid balance of newly acquired mortgages. Laurel Davis, a Fannie vice president, said the GSE wants to continue to grow its investor base and added that Fannie was recently in Australia talking to potential investors.
For the first time in two decades, the Uniform Residential Loan Application form will get a makeover.The redesign is intended to give lenders and borrowers a more useful and consumer-friendly experience, according to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who said the changes are expected to be completed by the summer of 2016. The GSEs are going to update the URLA to collect more relevant and useful information to help lenders make better underwriting decisions. Moreover, the new form will define a mortgage industry standards maintenance organization (MISMO) compliant dataset that supports the URLA. “Given the mortgage industry’s many changes over the years, along with the GSEs’ changes to underwriting policies and eligibility requirements, the...
Fannie Mae is reaching out to the last of the pack of borrowers looking to modify their loans and announced a policy change to its Servicing Management Default Underwriter tool that is aimed at qualifying more borrowers for foreclosure prevention assistance. Servicers use the tool to determine what foreclosure prevention options are available to help a borrower facing financial difficulty. The change requires servicers to now calculate the borrower’s full mortgage obligation, including the outstanding principal balance, past due interest and other arrearages, to determine eligibility for a Fannie Mae Standard Modification or Streamlined Modification. Prior to the change, only the outstanding principal balance was used.
The supply of home mortgage debt outstanding increased by 0.5 percent during the third quarter of 2015, following a similar modest gain during the previous period. A total of $9.952 trillion of single-family mortgage debt was outstanding at the end of September, according to a Federal Reserve report released late last week. It represented a second consecutive quarterly increase, something the mortgage servicing market has struggled to accomplish during the long contraction that started back in 2008. Most of the increase came...[Includes one data table]
Subservicing shops increased their portfolios to $1.50 trillion during the third quarter, a 6.4 percent sequential gain, as mortgage originators continued to rely on such specialty vendors, according to exclusive survey figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance. Compared to a year ago, subservicing volume was up an impressive 28.2 percent. At Sept. 30, roughly 15.8 percent of all outstanding residential mortgages were being processed...[Includes one data table]
Lenders generated $25.0 billion in home-equity loans during the third quarter of 2015, according to Inside Mortgage Finance estimates, a modest 4.2 percent increase at a time when first-lien originations were fading. Home-equity lending – including open-ended lines of credit and closed-end second liens – hit its highest volume since the second quarter of 2008. Crashing home prices and extremely cautious underwriting have drastically reduced new home-equity lending. There is...[Includes three data tables]
Congress looks poised to enact its second piece of legislation involving the two government-sponsored enterprises that have been in conservatorship for over seven years. Lawmakers included the “Jumpstart GSE Reform Act” in a fiscal 2016 omnibus spending bill that is expected to be approved late this week. The first piece of GSE legislation enacted by Congress affected just two people, rolling back pay raises awarded to the CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac early in 2015. The “Jumpstart” language is more daring by barring the Treasury Department from doing something it has no intention of doing: selling its preferred stock in the GSEs without Congressional approval. The original Jumpstart legislation, sponsored by Sens. Bob Corker, R-TN, Mark Warner, D-VA, and Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, also would have blocked...
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