Despite this year’s implementation of a new Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac representations and warranties framework that offers some repurchase relief three years after a loan is sold, officials from the two government-sponsored enterprises agree that the best way to beat a buyback request is to focus on quality control. Participants during an Inside Mortgage Finance webinar this week said the new reps and warranties policy has brought greatly increased scrutiny of new mortgages guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie. “Quality in the loan-manufacturing process is...
A few weeks back, many servicing brokers were predicting a land rush to close deals by year-end, but there’s a new school of thought that predicts sellers might wait until early 2014 to unload some of their deals. “While we don’t expect the [mortgage servicing rights] deal flow to turn off completely for 2013 just yet, we have noticed quite a slowdown in the marketplace as compared to the summer and early fall,” said George Christo, executive vice president of The Prestwick Group. “Many of our conversations with buyers and sellers have pivoted to setting the table for the first quarter of 2014 settlements.” Moreover, the frothy prices being offered for MSRs are...
“At the end of the day, we’re still dealing with a one-sided contract with a significant termination option,” said Jonathan Jaffe, an attorney who works on GSE buyback issues.
When it comes to auditing mortgage lenders, does the CFPB know what it’s doing? It all depends on who you talk to. Also, the FHFA cracks down on force placed insurance (again).
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each managed to meet its risk-sharing objectives for 2013 without breaking the link to the to-be-announced market, but their regulator wants the government-sponsored enterprises to go beyond the comfort zone. The risk-sharing transactions undertaken by the GSEs this year were very positive, but they relied on the “underlying infrastructure” of Fannie and Freddie MBS, said Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, in a speech at this week’s annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association. The Structured Agency Credit Transactions and Connecticut Avenue Securities launched, respectively, by Freddie and Fannie, involved selling relatively small amounts of debt that will pay investors based on the performance of separate MBS pools that were issued and trade in the TBA market. DeMarco wants...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency declared this week that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will finish making claims on pre-conservatorship mortgage acquisitions by the end of this year. “It is time for us to wrap up all our open issues dealing with that period and move on,” said FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco during a speech at the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “I look forward to a speedy resolution of remaining claims in the coming months.” The two GSEs became wards of the federal government in September 2008. For years, lenders have complained...
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