The list of reasons to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is growing and taxpayer risk is increasing the longer the current housing finance system lingers in uncertainty, according to speakers at a Capitol Hill briefing on government-sponsored enterprise reform sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Fowler Williams, president and CEO of Crescent Mortgage, said that without the secondary mortgage market outlet, smaller institutions like his would not be able to make 30-year fixed-rate mortgages available in rural and small towns. Ethan Handelman, vice president for policy and advocacy at the National Housing Conference, said...

Vintage Alt A mortgages continue to cause losses at the GSEs.

Freddie and Fannie both posted earnings north of $2 billion for the fourth quarter. But Freddie posted a net loss of $475 million in the third quarter of last year after booking a stunning $4.17 billion charge on its derivatives.

The inability of Fannie and Freddie to build capital is a huge issue, Stevens said.

In the new “Mortgage Professional’s Handbook,” residential finance technology expert Jeff Lebowitz predicts the industry “is about to exit its Victorian era of technology use."

If refinancings accelerate, Wells Fargo will need to step up production to protect its massive servicing portfolio...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to trim their retained investment portfolios in late 2015 with most of the focus on shrinking their non-agency MBS and holdings of their own securities. Freddie Mac’s retained mortgage portfolio declined 15.1 percent last year, ending at $346.91 billion, safely below the $359.3 billion cap set by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The government-sponsored enterprise reduced its non-agency MBS holdings by $25.60 billion, or 38.8 percent, from its yearend 2014 level. While that included hefty declines in both subprime and Alt A MBS, the biggest decline, 41.3 percent, was...[Includes one data table]

Bid deadlines on the portfolios being offered by MountainView range from March 3 to March 8.

Fannie Mae has been actively buying delinquent mortgages out of MBS trusts and plans to eventually issue securities collateralized by the loans, said Timothy Mayopoulos, CEO of the government-sponsored enterprise. During a recent earnings call and question-and-answer period with the press, the CEO noted that the GSE has bought a “substantial” number of mortgages out of trusts with the goal of making them performing again. “Over the next year or two,” Fannie will...

The unexpected decline in mortgage rates this year has moved a significant portion of the agency MBS market into the zone where it’s worthwhile for borrowers to refinance, according to a new analysis of agency MBS data by Inside MBS & ABS. As of the end of December, some 24.4 percent of loans backing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae MBS had mortgage rates ranging from 4.01 percent to 4.50 percent. Altogether, $1.500 trillion of existing single-family mortgages were in that bucket. According to Inside Mortgage Finance, the average offering rate for 30-year fixed-rate conventional mortgages this week was...[Includes one data table]