With the Trump administration now officially in office, GSE shareholders are optimistic about their cases against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being resolved. Investors Unite hosted a call last week during which legal experts weighed in on the outlook for GSE shareholder cases. Plaintiffs have been arguing that a government bailout of the GSEs and the subsequent Treasury sweep were unnecessary and illegal. John Yoo, Heller Professor of Law at the University of California Berkley School of Law, said he thinks the election makes a big difference because it gives an incoming president the opportunity to review the constitutional claims of the last president and decide whether to change them.
Marking one of the first major GSE changes of the new year, Fannie Mae’s new investor reporting requirement goes into effect next week on Feb. 1. Fannie said that servicers must use the updated transaction types and formats when reporting loan activity for the February 2017 reporting period. To minimize challenges during the transition, Fannie announced a temporary moratorium on post-delivery servicing transfers with effective dates from Feb.1, 2017, through March 31, 2017. …
Securitization of commercial mortgages was down slightly in 2016 as a result of a sharp drop in the non-agency commercial MBS market, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. Meanwhile, the agency multifamily MBS platforms cranked out record new issuance last year. In total, some $209.03 billion of commercial-property MBS were issued last year, a 3.1 percent drop from 2015. It still ranked as the second most-productive year in commercial MBS issuance since 2007, the year before the financial market meltdown. But non-agency CMBS issuance fell...[Includes one data table]
Fannie Prices $1.351B CAS Deal. Fannie Mae priced its first credit risk-sharing transaction of 2017 last week, under its Connecticut Avenue Securities program. CAS Series 2017-C01, a $1.351 billion note offering, was scheduled to settle on Jan. 26, 2017. Laurel Davis, vice president of credit risk transfer, said “We saw an overwhelmingly positive response to our first deal of the year from a broad range of investors.” …
Mortgage originations defied expectations in the fourth quarter and held virtually even with the previous period, despite a measurable increase in mortgage interest rates. According to exclusive new Inside Mortgage Finance estimates, some $580.0 billion of first-lien mortgages were originated during the fourth quarter of 2016, a slight 0.9 percent drop from the third quarter. That lifted total production for the year to an estimated $2.065 trillion, up 19.0 percent from the 2015 total. Industry forecasters were...[Includes two data tables]
Hedge fund manager Pershing Square Capital Management is facing a bit of a dilemma in regard to its huge investment in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac common stock: take profits off the table now – while it still can – or go for broke, hoping for a huge payout later on. At last check, Pershing – the brainchild of veteran investor Bill Ackman – owned roughly 9.98 percent of Fannie and 9.77 percent of Freddie. It accumulated the shares earlier in the decade at an average price of $2.30 for Fannie and $2.14 for Freddie. Today, Fannie’s common trades...
Prospects for a relatively speedy administrative solution to the eight-year-old conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac appeared to dim after Treasury Secretary-nominee Steve Mnuchin backtracked from earlier comments on swiftly addressing the plight of the two government-sponsored enterprises. During a Jan. 19 Senate confirmation hearing, Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA, asked Mnuchin if he supports a recapitalization-and-release plan for the GSEs, as several industry groups have proposed. “First, let’s be clear,” Mnuchin said. “My comments were...
Some $157.6 million of interest-only loans were included in prime non-agency MBS issued in the fourth quarter, the highest IO volume since the third quarter of 2015.
Through the first nine months of 2016 – which represents the latest available data – Invitation Homes posted a net loss of $51.6 million, compared to a $121.7 million loss in the same period a year earlier.
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