Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each received high marks on a relatively easy performance test from the Federal Housing Finance Agency in the GSEs’ compliance with the FHFA’s Conservatorship Scorecard, both companies revealed in their fourth quarter 2012 financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In March 2012, the FHFA developed, with input from GSE management, the boards of directors and the companies’ compensation committees, a set of performance objectives and directed each firm to implement them. The three strategic goals of the scorecard called for the GSEs to build a new securitization infrastructure, contract Fannie’s and Freddie’s dominant marketplace presence and maintain foreclosure prevention activities and credit availability for new and refinance mortgages.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now earning money hand-over-fist - cash that will wind up in the coffers of Uncle Sam. But is the White House underestimating how much the two GSEs will earn?
Total MBS and ABS issuance rose almost 3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2012 to $515.3 billion during the first three months of 2013, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking.
The bulk servicing market is beginning to generate heat. The latest offering comes from Interactive Mortgage Advisors, but other deals are in the works as well.
Freddie Mac has a new head of single-family: David Lowman, an industry veteran who in the past headed mortgage operations at JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.
There’s a growing interest on the part of new investors in buying residential mortgage servicing rights, but observers say a major impediment for the market is a lack of confidence that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will acknowledge their ownership rights. “It’s a problem,” said Tom Piercy, managing member of Interactive Mortgage Advisors, a servicing brokerage and advisory firm. “Fannie and Freddie could learn a thing or two from Ginnie.” The phrase “new investors” generally applies...
Fannie Mae’s plan to unload potentially billions of dollars’ worth of non-performing loans has been delayed and may even be scuttled, according to industry officials tracking the project. Fannie has been working on an NPL sale for close to a year, and has even hired an investment banker, Milestone Advisors LLC, to guide it through the auction process. Initially, it had hoped to offer a package of $250 million of delinquent home mortgages for sale to the highest bidder. Although the government-sponsored enterprise would not comment...
Consumer advocates are calling on the Obama administration to extend the Home Affordable Modification Program beyond the end of this year. While HAMP is far from meeting performance goals set by the administration, consumer advocates claim the program is favorable to proprietary loan modifications completed by servicers. “Extending the HAMP program for several years – or, at a minimum, for one year – would greatly assist the housing market in general and neighborhoods most affected by high foreclosure rates in particular by helping more homeowners avoid foreclosure,” 36 consumer groups, including the Center for Responsible Lending and the National Consumer Law Center, said in a recent letter to Jacob Lew, secretary of the Treasury Department. In January 2012, the Obama administration announced...
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