Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will try to transfer the credit risk on 90 percent of their mainstream mortgage business in 2016 under new marching orders from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, but next year’s activity may end up being less than the 2015 total. The FHFA in the past has set credit-risk transfer goals based on specific dollar amounts. But next year’s target is to sell some of the credit risk on nearly all of the fixed-rate mortgages the two government-sponsored enterprises buy that have loan terms exceeding 20 years and loan-to-value ratios over 60 percent. Activity in the dwindling Home Affordable Refinance Program will be excluded. In the first 11 months of 2015, the two GSEs securitized...

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association advised Capitol Hill that the successful government-sponsored enterprise credit risk-sharing programs could be improved to increase liquidity and investor interest. In a letter to Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, the Wall Street group said, “Up-front risk-sharing could make housing finance more efficient and sustainable by allowing the GSEs to achieve day-one risk transfers without having to warehouse credit risk until it can be distributed in a back-end credit transfer transaction.” It added...

The U.S. residential MBS sector will continue its slow, steady recovery in 2016 amid a host of challenges, showing further improvement in housing fundamentals, credit quality and mortgage performance, according to analysts. The challenges to MBS structured financing boil down to the following: tapering of Federal Reserve investment in MBS, MBS supply and demand, interest rates and prepayment risk. Fitch Ratings notes...

Despite millions of dollars and hours spent on educating consumers about the mortgage process, many still lack the knowledge and understanding of how the process works, results of a new Fannie Mae survey suggest. The survey set out to discover why the homeownership rate remains at a low level (63.7 percent in the third quarter of 2015) despite easing credit standards, a higher employment rate and strong consumer desire to own a home. The online survey of 3,868 respondents found ...

There was a flurry of activity, including a call for an investigation by the Department of Justice of Mortgage Bankers Association President David Stevens and two others, following a Dec. 7 New York Times piece criticizing the Obama administration and MBA for looking to shut down the GSEs. Stevens, along with Michael Berman, a former MBA chair, and Jim Parrott, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, all former government officials turned private-sector employees, each met with housing policy officials at the White House after leaving their government posts, according to a guest log review by the New York Times.

An analysis of the first in a wave of loans that were modified after the financial crisis suggests that interest rate resets required by the Home Affordable Modification Program are not causing a spike in delinquencies. The predominant loan mod completed under HAMP reduced a borrower’s interest rate to as low as 2.00 percent for five years, then required a yearly 1.00 percentage point increase to the interest rate until reaching the primary mortgage rate in effect at the time of the mod ...

In hopes of ending a credit scoring system monopoly, Reps. Ed Royce, R-CA, and Terri Sewell, D-AL, recently introduced H.R. 4211, a bill that lets the GSEs consider alternative credit scoring models when deciding which mortgages to purchase. “The GSEs' use of a single credit score is an unfair practice that stifles competition and innovation in credit scoring,” said Royce. He added that breaking up the credit score monopoly at Fannie and Freddie will also assist them in managing their credit risk and decreases the potential for another taxpayer bailout. The Federal Housing Finance Agency directed the GSEs to look into the potential of alternative forms of credit scoring earlier this year.

The GSEs’ low-downpayment product still lacks any strong momentum but has witnessed modest growth since it was launched earlier this year. The FHA/VA maintains its place as the preferred product for borrowers in need of downpayment assistance. Ginnie Mae has accounted for 94.5 percent of purchase mortgages with loan-to-value ratios ranging from 95.1 percent to 97.0 percent that were securitized by the three agencies during the first 11 months of 2015, according to an analysis by affiliated publication Inside Mortgage Finance of loan-level data on agency mortgage-backed securities. Because LTV data is not available for all loans in Ginnie MBS, the agency’s actual share of these high-LTV loans is likely somewhat higher.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both said they plan to ramp up their credit risk transfers in 2016 and explore more types of transactions. Representatives from the GSEs and FHFA spoke on a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association risk-sharing panel last week in New York. This goes in line with Fannie’s and Freddie’s recently released 2016 scorecard in which the Federal Housing Finance Agency directed the GSEs to transfer credit risk on at least 90 percent of the unpaid balance of newly acquired mortgages. Laurel Davis, a Fannie vice president, said the GSE wants to continue to grow its investor base and added that Fannie was recently in Australia talking to potential investors.

For the first time in two decades, the Uniform Residential Loan Application form will get a makeover.The redesign is intended to give lenders and borrowers a more useful and consumer-friendly experience, according to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who said the changes are expected to be completed by the summer of 2016. The GSEs are going to update the URLA to collect more relevant and useful information to help lenders make better underwriting decisions. Moreover, the new form will define a mortgage industry standards maintenance organization (MISMO) compliant dataset that supports the URLA. “Given the mortgage industry’s many changes over the years, along with the GSEs’ changes to underwriting policies and eligibility requirements, the...