The Trump administration late this week published its thoughts on ending the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, aiming to reduce their role in the housing-finance market – while providing an explicit U.S. guarantee on conventional MBS.
MBS guarantee fees currently charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are at levels sufficient to meet capital requirements recently proposed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to industry analysts. The proposal could also bring attention to cross-subsidization in g-fee pricing, especially under a new FHFA director.
Ginnie Mae will be ramping up its efforts over the next three years to ensure issuer liquidity by expanding the supply of stable capital to support mortgage servicing rights and to strengthen oversight of counterparty risk.
A healthy share of new primary market mortgage originations were delivered into mortgage securities during the first quarter of 2018, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals, although Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac appeared to be losing some share. [Includes one data chart.]
As the Federal Reserve slowly unwinds its agency MBS holdings, economists forecast there are more disposals to come and without much market disruption.
A switch from the London Inter-bank Offered Rate to a different reference rate won’t have a major impact on the commercial MBS market, according to analysts at Morningstar Credit Ratings.
Defaults remain low on student loan refinancing originated by online lenders due to the overall high quality of their borrowers, and some new repayment assistance programs will help the strong performance, said Moody’s Investors Service.
Merrill Lynch has agreed to pay more than $15 million to resolve allegations that its traders misled investors into overpaying for residential MBS. In other legal stories, a monoline insurer sued a trustee over the settlement amount in an RMBS repurchase case while another group of MBS trustees defeated a class-certification motion in California state court.
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