In an ongoing attempt to offer lenders more clarity and reduce buybacks, Fannie Mae has taken its new Collateral Underwriter program to the next phase and integrated it with other loan-processing systems.After introducing Collateral Underwriter in January, Fannie announced on April 20 that it incorporated the tool with Desktop Underwriter, an automated underwriting system, and Early Check, the company’s pre-delivery loan eligibility and data evaluation tool. The GSE said this will provide a better view of risk on a loan across multiple applications, allowing lenders to address potential issues prior to loan delivery. CU, Fannie’s proprietary appraisal analysis application that gives lenders access to analytics, public records and other data when...

Fannie Mae recently launched a new program to help first-time homebuyers purchase a home while alleviating any possible confusion surrounding the buying process. As part of the HomePath Ready Buyer Education Program, qualified buyers could receive up to three percent closing cost assistance once they complete an online education course. The class is an important component of the program, according to Fannie. “Purchasing your first home can be an overwhelming process,” said Fannie’s Jay Ryan, vice president of REO Sales. “We developed the HomePath Ready Buyer program to provide first-time homebuyers with the knowledge to make informed decisions as they navigate the complexities of the homebuying process.”

The GSEs have provided multifamily financing for more than two decades, but their dwindling role has some worried that it has adverse effects on the underserved and low-income segment of the multifamily market. Although the Federal Housing Finance Agency said it is working to slow the decline, an April brief by the Urban Institute pointed out that with the increasing demand and costs of renting, the agency may need to do more in maintaining or increasing the GSE role in multifamily. In the past 25 years, the dollar volume of GSE multifamily financing has grown from $4.5 billion in 1990 to more than $57 billion at the end of 2014. But recent declines show that Fannie’s and Freddie’s

Treasury Counselor Michael Stegman said despite the inability to recapitalize, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the housing market in general, are better off under the current conservatorship plan. He pointed to lower bowering costs as one of the advantages. The Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement, in which the Treasury gets the bulk of the GSEs profits, has been a source of frustration for some. However, Stegman, speaking at a Financial Services Roundtable event in Washington last week, said he wanted to “correct the record.” “The dividends that Treasury receives are not a repayment for the capital support and backstop that Treasury has provided,” he said. “The fact is that the PSPAs provide tremendous value to the GSEs. Market participants continue to have confidence...

Most of the slack is being taken up by nonbanks, which serviced $1.571 trillion of agency MBS at March 31.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency late last week directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop charging the 25 basis point “adverse market” fee assessed on all loans since the financial crises, but most lower-risk loans won’t get any reduction in loan-level pricing adjustments. As expected, the FHFA did not make any changes to the “base” guaranty fees charged by the two government-sponsored enterprises. Current fees, on average, are at an “appropriate” level. “We are going to monitor this on an ongoing or quarterly basis and we’ll adjust based on market conditions,” said Sandra Thompson, FHFA’s deputy director. The regulator instructed...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency late last week announced a few changes to new private mortgage insurer eligibility rules that were first proposed in July 2014, and the private MI industry appears mostly ready for them. “The new PMIERs are really designed to promote the counterparty strength of private mortgage insurers. We feel like this will strengthen the industry,” said Gina Haly, Freddie Mac’s vice president in the mortgage insurance and risk transfer counterparty credit division. During the financial crisis, some MIs couldn’t fully pay...

The agency mortgage servicing market grew modestly during the first quarter of 2015, thanks to Ginnie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of agency mortgage-backed securities disclosures. Lenders serviced a total of $5.287 trillion of single-family mortgages pooled in outstanding agency MBS as of the end of March, up 0.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2014. The figures do not include unsecuritized loans guaranteed by the two government-sponsored enterprises or, in the case of Ginnie, FHA-insured reverse mortgages. And the numbers don’t perfectly synch up with aggregated reports by the agencies of their guaranteed mortgage debt outstanding. All three of the top agency MBS servicers had...[Includes two data charts]

With private mortgage insurance eligibility requirements now a done deal, the MI industry may have a new headache on its hands: concerns from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – and their regulator – about the discounting of lender-paid MI policies. Industry officials familiar with the LPMI issue have been telling Inside Mortgage Finance for weeks that the government-sponsored enterprises are taking a close look at the product. Although the Federal Housing Finance Agency declined to discuss LPMI, a spokesman for Freddie Mac offered...

Most of Sen. Grassley's inquiry focused on transparency and whether the president invoked executive privilege over some of the documents pertaining to the third amendment to the PSPAs...