Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw a largely seasonal decline in single-family business in October, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis of mortgage-backed securities data. The two GSEs guaranteed $99.33 billion of single-family MBS during October, an 8.3 percent decline from the previous month. Most of the slippage was in purchase-money mortgages, which fell 14.5 percent from September, following typical seasonal patterns. The refi market held up a lot better. October volume was down 1.6 percent from September, while still ranking as the second-highest monthly total so far this year. That pushed the refi business to 60.2 percent of GSE volume, excluding modified loans.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency raised the maximum conforming loan limit for GSE mortgages by $7,100 for 2017, amid rising home values. The new loan limit, announced Nov. 23, is $424,100 and represents the first time in a decade, since the housing downturn, that the conforming loan limit climbed above $417,000. The baseline loan limit was established by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act and is recalibrated each year to reflect the changes in a national home price index. Until now, the index has not risen above levels set in the third quarter of 2007.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s strategic plan for the GSEs reflects a shift in priorities that has created more uncertainty. The GAO said the regulator revised the wording of the goals in the 2014 plan to align it more closely with FHFA’s statutory responsibilities. In the absence of an official post-conservatorship plan for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the GAO was asked to examine the FHFA’s actions as conservator in a report highlighting the objectives needed for the future of the two companies after the conservatorship. The report noted that the FHFA increased its emphasis on maintaining credit availability and foreclosure prevention options, shifted away from...
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, called for greater accountability of the GSEs and discussed reintroducing his Dodd-Frank Act reform bill in the next Congress, during remarks in Washington last week. He said the GOP’s PATH (Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners) Act would help end the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout. The PATH Act, first introduced in 2013, proposes to phase out the GSEs within five years. In addition to ending the “costly” bailout, Hensarling said the bill would protect and restore the FHA to its defined mission, increase mortgage competition, enhance transparency, maximize consumer choice, and break down barriers to private investment capital.
The GSEs have sold more than 59,629 nonperforming loans through August 2016, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s second report this year highlighting the activity of nonperforming loan sales and borrower outcomes. That number is up from the 41,649 NPLs that were sold through May 2016. The report, released last week, is part of the FHFA’s plans to make NPL sales data more transparent. The agency released its inaugural report in July and plans on publishing two each year. The latest report shows that the NPLs had a total unpaid principal balance of $11.9 billion, were delinquent 3.4 years on average and had an average current loan-to-value ratio of 97 percent.
The GSEs’ credit-risk sharing program has expanded over the years but not everyone has been fond of the transactions designed to transfer risk away from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Tim Howard, a former Fannie CFO, has become one of the program’s biggest critics. He said today’s credit-risk transfer program, mandated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, removes the “normal economic discipline” of a company making its own decisions about which risks to keep and which ones to share, and on what terms. He said that the CRT transactions being done today are nothing like those done during his time at Fannie, before the start of the conservatorship.
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