Two months after it was revealed that Fannie Mae would provide $1 billion in financing to single-family rental operator Invitation Homes, certain factions of the mortgage industry are starting to yell “charter creep.” Moreover, the National Association of Realtors and other trade groups are complaining that perhaps Fannie is spending too much of its limited resources helping Wall Street – the Blackstone Group grubstaked Invitation Homes initially – and not enough to help the first-time homebuyer. “What’s...
Thanks to strong growth in the agency market, the supply of single-family MBS outstanding continued to grow over the final three months of 2016, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals. Agency MBS outstanding pushed to a new record, $6.034 trillion, as of the end of last year. The biggest gainer continued to be Ginnie Mae, which reported a 2.2 percent increase in the fourth quarter and a 7.7 percent gain for the year. Freddie Mac matched Ginnie’s fourth-quarter increase, but its year-to-date gain was smaller, 4.2 percent. Fannie Mae had...[Includes two data tables]
Tax reform may have a significant impact on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, before federal policymakers get around to resolving the long-running conservatorships of the two government-sponsored enterprises. Reducing the corporate tax rate is a big component of the Trump administration’s tax reform plan, but it could force the GSEs to write down the value of their deferred tax assets. “It is...
In a prominent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholder case, the government was ordered to go back through thousands of documents related to the Treasury sweep to determine whether they fall under the executive privilege that has been more narrowly defined. In an attempt to make sure the government asserted privilege properly on the 11,000 documents it is withholding, Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney asked it to reexamine the large batch and turn over any that don’t merit secrecy by April 17. This order follows...
The three major credit bureaus plan to exclude two critical pieces of negative information from their reports, which may make it easier for some borrowers to qualify for a mortgage.