Promoting affordable housing by recapitalizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is the premise of a new study released this week by the Brookings Institution arguing that their conservatorship should come to an end. Obama administration officials have previously rejected such proposals. The paper noted that the Treasury Department’s sweep policy, which takes the bulk of Fannie’s and Freddie’s profits, limits the government-sponsored enterprises’ ability to promote homeownership and expand access to affordable home ownership, especially among low-income households. Robert Shapiro, former Brookings fellow, and chairman of Sonecon, LLC, along with Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at Brookings, said...
The goal of the program is to help stabilize neighborhoods that were hardest hit by the real estate downturn by letting local community organizations review and purchase foreclosed properties first.
The nation’s largest mortgage investing REIT, Annaly Capital Management, reported a $627 million loss in the third quarter compared to a $900 million profit in 2Q.
Wells Fargo once again ranked first among all GSE sellers with a market share of 15.3 percent in October, almost triple that of the number two ranked Quicken Loans.
New agency issuance of single-family MBS declined in October as a result of a slowdown in the purchase-mortgage market, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a total of $107.19 billion of single-family MBS last month, a 5.6 percent slip from September’s volume. The flow of purchase mortgages securitized by the three agencies was down 9.6 percent for the month, while refinance volume was up 2.6 percent in October. Some of the strength in refi activity is...[Includes two data tables]
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to reduce their retained mortgage portfolios during the third quarter by a combined $35.2 billion, a period in which Fannie reported a $2.2 billion gain in earnings while Freddie suffered a $475 million loss. Freddie Mac noted that its investments in less liquid assets were $114.2 billion at the end of the quarter, down 8 percent or $10.1 billion from the second quarter. The government-sponsored enterprise attributed this to its ongoing portfolio liquidation and the sales of $3.4 billion of non-agency MBS. Freddie also securitized $4.0 billion of single-family re-performing and modified loans. Since being placed in conservatorship, Fannie and Freddie have been...[Includes one data table]
RSS