The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s structure was deemed unconstitutional this week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. And in another rejection for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders, the court ruled the Treasury net worth sweep was within the agency’s power.
While the GSEs have been engaging in risk-based pricing for mortgage guarantees since the crisis, very large cross subsidies remain, according to one panelist from the Federal Reserve…
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae saw a somewhat sedated increase in single-family mortgage-backed security issuance during the second quarter. The trends closely tracked forecasts. Agency purchase-mortgage business was up a solid 24.5 percent from the first quarter, boosting the 2018 market slightly ahead of where it was at the midway point last year. And refinance activity continued to tumble, dropping 21.3 percent from the first quarter to just ... [Includes two data charts]
California remained the biggest market in the U.S. for primary mortgage insurance during the second quarter, but other states had higher proportions of insured loans, according to an Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of agency loan-level data. In Florida, Virginia and Georgia, more than 60 percent of agency loans carried some form of primary mortgage insurance ... [Includes one data chart]
The judges opined: "Indeed, the GSEs lost more in 2008 ($108 billion) than they had earned in the previous thirty-seven years combined ($95 billion). Yet the GSEs remained solvent.”
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