The Federal Housing Finance Agency is opening back up the possibility of adding a question about language preference on the Uniform Residential Loan Application. In a request for input issued on May 25, the FHFA is seeking information on a number of potential short-term and long-term improvements to help borrowers not fluent in English better understand the mortgage process. The FHFA is looking for stakeholder views on issues like translating more documents in different languages, education about multilingual housing counselors, using emerging technologies and tracking borrowers’ preferred languages. The FHFA originally suggested data tracking last year and considered including a question about a borrower’s language preference in the Uniform Residential Loan Application to help lenders and...
The GSEs’ reperforming loan programs are making inroads with both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announcing recent RPL transactions to help reduce the amount of illiquid assets in their portfolios.Fannie introduced its first reperforming loan sale back in November and the program has continued to gain popularity with each sale. The program has grown from its first sale, which totaled $789.2 million in unpaid principal balance to the most recent transaction of approximately $3.0 billion. The pool included approximately 13,700 loans that were previously delinquent, but are performing again with or without the use of a loan modification.
The demand for single-family rental financing will likely grow, said the Urban Institute, on the heels of Fannie Mae completing its first single-family rental securitization deal with a large institutional investor. The GSE has done smaller SFR transactions but this one, a $1 billion deal with Invitation Homes, was billed as a pilot program earlier this year. The Blackstone Group subsidiary, based in Dallas, has a portfolio of about 50,000 homes acquired from foreclosures. It is the largest single-family rental operator in the U.S. These kinds of transactions are expected to increase as investors rely more on leverage to earn an acceptable rate of return, said...
Fannie DUS Provides Additional Data for Multifamily. Fannie Mae announced the creation of DUS Disclose, a new MBS disclosure website that will enhance the transparency and increase the data available for multifamily securities in alignment with the industry. The new platform will replace the existing Multifamily Securities Locator Service and is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2017. Fannie Headquarters to Morph into High-End Grocer. As Fannie Mae prepares to vacate its iconic headquarters with a move to downtown Washington in 2018, plans are coming along for the soon-to-be former site of the GSE. Roadside Development announced...
While the industry continues to debate the merits of allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to build a capital cushion for “zero day” in 2018, investors in MBS have a different agenda: making sure that whatever the future holds for the government-sponsored enterprises, it had better include a federal guarantee on conventional mortgage securities. Without it, the MBS market would suffer greatly – as would residential lending and the sale of new and existing homes. So far, no one knows...
Purchase-mortgage lending saw a big drop in volume during the first quarter of 2017, but indicators suggest that the sector has been rebounding in recent months and will post a solid gain by the time the year is over. An estimated $205.0 billion of purchase mortgages were originated in the first quarter, a sizable 19.6 percent decline from the previous period. But with an even bigger 44.6 percent slump in refinance lending, purchase mortgages accounted for over half (53.2 percent) of total first-lien originations in the first three months of the year. It was...[Includes three data tables]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week announced it will assess the effectiveness of its ability-to-repay/qualified-mortgage rule, as per the requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act, and is asking for public input. The CFPB will examine the impact of major provisions of the rule on mortgage costs, origination volumes, approval rates and subsequent loan performance. A special focus is on self-employed borrowers, those with seasonal or part-time income and borrowers with income from assets. Another topic for review is...
With interest rates projected to rise, lenders are putting an increased emphasis on purchase mortgages. A little-used feature in post-crisis originations could help boost purchase-mortgage originations: temporary interest rate buydowns. A temporary buydown can help increase a lender’s “market potential” by offering borrowers lower initial payments and the stability of predictable payment increases, according to Freddie Mac. Temporary buydowns generally last...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency wants to know how Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks can better help borrowers with limited English proficiency (LEP) throughout the entire mortgage cycle, from lending to servicing. With the numbers of individuals not able to speak English fluently growing in the U.S., the FHFA wants to learn more about some of the procedures and tools that originators, servicers, and other parties in the mortgage lending process currently use to help LEP borrowers. To better understand the challenges, the FHFA issued...
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