A prolonged conservatorship coupled with a change in leadership at the Federal Housing Finance Agency could shift priorities for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO said a potential priority change for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would only send mixed messages, creating uncertainties for market participants and hindering the development of the broader secondary mortgage market. In its 2017 biennial report released this month, the GAO discussed actions that need to be taken in order to resolve the federal role in housing finance. The need for leadership commitment by Congress and the administration to reform the system was one of the primary themes.
Several more documents were released in relation to an ongoing GSE shareholder case out to prove that the government knew Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were on the path to profitability at the time the Treasury sweep was put in place.The release came after a judge rejected the government’s appeal of an earlier ruling requiring it to turn over a slew of documents for which it had asserted various forms of privilege in Fairholme Funds vs. United States, et al. All of the latest documents are from 2012. They include a July 20, 2012, memo stating “thoughts on how to signal a plan to amend the preferred stock purchase agreements,” from Treasury...
A structural change in Freddie Mac’s popular Structured Agency Credit Risk transfer program gives Freddie less credit protection at higher loss levels, according to an analysis of the GSE’s first STACR deal of the year. So far, this year, Freddie has priced STACR Series 2017-DNA1 on Jan. 31 and STACR Series 2017-HQA1 on Feb. 14. The first deal of the year was an $802 million STACR debt notes offering referencing mortgages with low loan-to-value ratios ranging from 60 to 80 percent. This particular deal has a reference pool of single-family mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of about $33.9 billion.
Freddie’s First NPL Sale of 2017. Freddie Mac announced its first nonperforming loan sale of the year last week, a $759 million auction of seasoned non-performing residential whole loans. The NPLs are currently serviced by Nationstar Mortgage LLC and Specialized Loan Servicing LLC. This is also Freddie Mac’s second multi-servicer NPL transaction. The NPLs are being marketed via five pools: four Standard Pool Offerings and one Extended Timeline Pool Offering, which targets participation by smaller investors, including non-profits and minority and women-owned businesses. HARP Refi Volume Slow in 4Q. The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that 13,220 borrowers refinanced their mortgages through the Home Affordable Refinance Program...
Most real estate investment trusts that invest in MBS and other mortgage-related assets reported declines in their holdings of agency and non-agency securities during the fourth quarter, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. The top publicly traded REITs had a combined residential MBS portfolio valued at $228.28 billion as of the end of 2016. That was down 3.5 percent from the previous quarter and off 6.5 percent from the end of 2015. The figures are preliminary because several smaller REITs have not yet reported fourth-quarter results. Agency MBS continued...[Includes one data table]
The retained mortgage investments of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac declined by 17.5 percent over the course of 2016, keeping the two government-sponsored enterprises on track to meet targets set as conditions of their conservatorships. The two GSEs reported a combined $570.78 billion in retained mortgage investments at yearend, down 7.3 percent from September. The biggest decline was in their holdings of MBS, which fell 23.8 percent for the year. Back in the early 2000s, Fannie and Freddie were...[Includes one data table]
Nonbank mortgage giant PHH Corp. – which posted combined losses of $347 million the past two years – is betting its future on subservicing, a business it describes as being “capital light” and one that could lead to riches down the road. As outlined by senior management during a recent call with analysts, the company will focus on processing loans for other shops, splitting the underlying servicing fee – 25 basis points on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac loans – with the owner of those receivables. PHH CEO Glen Messina described...
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