As talks intensify on how to get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of limbo, smaller lenders are clamoring to make sure they have a say in how housing-finance reform plays out. Nearly all sides agree that small lenders should continue to have access to the secondary market; how that’s accomplished is a different matter. The Main Street GSE Reform Coalition – an umbrella group made up of small-lender and community-advocacy groups – wants the government-sponsored enterprises to begin rebuilding capital buffers by suspending their dividend payments to the Treasury Department. It also wants...
The proposal to restructure the credit-risk transfer debt-note programs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make them more attractive to real estate investment trusts likely won’t have a negative impact on the credit risk and quality of those deals, Morningstar said in a new report. The proposed changes to Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities and Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk programs would characterize them as real estate mortgage investment conduits. This would allow REITs and some overseas investors to participate more broadly in the programs. Currently, the structure of the government-sponsored enterprises’ popular CRT programs doesn’t meet...
According to Fairholme’s math, the GSEs earn over $15 billion a year, and taxpayers own 80 percent of the companies (via the senior preferred). Berkowitz values the senior stock at $100 billion…
There's a race on to see who will be the first to deliver a best-in-class lending automation product that the consumer trusts, said consultant Paul Hindman...
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