The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s new “servicing project” will take a close look at how large-scale packages of mortgage-servicing rights are sold and transferred, but will also delve into what mortgage bankers thought was a dead issue: minimum servicing fees paid to processors. “You might say that FHFA is tackling the whole servicing arena in a big way,” said one mortgage consultant who has been briefed on the agency’s plans. The regulator’s sudden interest in transfers comes...
Amid growing calls by lawmakers and policy advocates to divert some of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s increasing profitability to an affordable housing commitment, industry observers speculate that new Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt is seriously inclined to act that way. The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 requires the government-sponsored enterprises to make annual contributions to the National Housing Trust Fund and Capital Magnet Fund. Fannie and Freddie were put in government conservatorship before they ever made any contribution. Late last week, more than 30 Senate Democrats told...
One of the complications of the federal government’s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has been the injection of uncertainty over whether the two government-sponsored enterprises can foreclose by advertisement due to Uncle Sam’s control of the companies. That has bred some novel legal arguments against the GSEs’ ability in this regard, but they have met with mixed results thus far. “Over the past several months, one of the newer arguments challenging foreclosure by borrowers is...
In supplemental materials to his speech, President Obama referenced the GSEs' “failed business model,” adding that taxpayers should never again be “on the hook for bad loans and bailouts.”
The settlement covers damages suffered by Fannie Mae from misrepresentations Lehman was alleged to have made regarding the quality of non-agency product it sold to the GSE.
Mortgage topics don’t always make the President’s State of the Union speech, but President Obama Tuesday night may touch on the issue of credit availability and whether the government has “gone too far.”
Meanwhile, MountainView Servicing Group is also in the market with a new MSR offering: $224 million of receivables backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac product.
Despite AEI’s findings, delinquencies on GSE loans continue to fall. In December, for example, Freddie’s single-family delinquency rate totaled 2.39 percent compared to 3.25 percent a year earlier.
The cost of mortgage compliance was a topic making the rounds at the recent ABS Vegas show in Nevada. Attendees, of course, wanted to know who might pay for all the new added costs.
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