Fannie Mae announced it has replaced the company’s outgoing top finance executive from within. David Benson, 53, currently Fannie’s executive vice president of capital markets, securitization and corporate strategy, will be the GSE’s fourth chief financial officer since the company’s government takeover in September 2008. Benson replaces Susan McFarland, who joined the company as CFO in July 2011. She will step down as soon as Benson assumes the position and will remain employed by Fannie as a senior advisor for a transition period through June 30, 2013, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Fannie Mae is having internal discussions regarding how it might change the way it holds mortgage seller/servicers responsible for losses when a deficiency is discovered on a delivered loan. A spokesman for Fannie told Inside The GSEs that under one scenario, a lender might take the “credit loss” on a mortgage with Fannie agreeing to keep the loan as opposed to forcing a buyback. A deficiency might include a mistake made during the underwriting process, such as borrower information being incorrectly punched into a computer. “If data were punched in wrong, there might be a pricing change,” said the spokesman.
Freddie Mac’s real estate sales unit is looking to bring in more lending partners to widen the reach of its financing program implemented last year specifically to move the GSE’s real-estate owned properties. Since the company rolled out its Homesteps Financing program during the second half of 2012 in four select states, the new financing option for both owner-occupied and investor purchase of REO properties has yielded promising enough results to prompt expansion, says a Freddie…
Freddie Mac is still owed $1.2 billion from the bankrupt Lehman Brothers and likely will not be reimbursed anytime soon due to the fact that the GSE is an “unsecured” creditor, according to a new report by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General. The report notes that the loan was made in August of 2008, not long before Lehman went bust and Freddie was placed into government conservatorship. The loan was described by Freddie officials as a “Fed Funds” transaction available to Lehman on an overnight basis. However, the limit on such transactions was $250 million, according to the OIG Report.
The jumbo mortgage market enjoyed solid growth in new originations last year, but agency securitization programs regained some of the ground lost to the private sector back in 2011, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA in 2012 financed a record $117.6 billion of home mortgages that exceed the traditional jumbo threshold of $417,000. That was up 38.9 percent from the combined agency total back in 2011, and it was roughly twice the growth rate in non-agency jumbo mortgage originations. The non-agency jumbo market rose...[Includes three data charts]
Early on, one of the biggest problems with the Home Affordable Refinance Program was the inability of nonbank lenders to participate in the effort. Many were willing – but their warehouse lenders were nervous about putting high loan-to-value loans on their books, even for just a few weeks. But since last summer Fannie Mae, and to a lesser extent Freddie Mac, have made a concerted effort to allay the fears of warehouse financiers about the risk inherent in the loans. “Fannie Mae has basically been...[Includes one data chart]
Most mortgage banking firms – both bank and nonbanks alike – have been posting record profits over the past year, creating the pleasant problem of what to do with all that cash. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance over the past few weeks, certain nonbank owners have been taking cash out of their companies, using the money to pay hefty tax bills. Others have been leaving money in the company and searching for ways to shelter income. One way to do that, according to some tax experts, is to retain originated servicing rights. This is...
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