Over the past couple of weeks, a battle has been brewing over the government’s response to a court order to release dozens of documents regarding the U.S. Treasury’s net worth sweep of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits. Plaintiffs in Fairholme Funds Inc. v. United States, et al, filed an emergency enforcement motion arguing that the government is purposely taking too long to produce the documents and requesting unnecessary extensions. Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney ordered the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Treasury to turn over 56 documents to the plaintiff’s attorney, under seal, back in mid-September. The agencies had been...
Ginnie Mae’s decision to change the pooling requirements for streamline refinance loans should boost investor confidence and slow new production of GNMA IIs, Deutsche Bank analysts said. The change could be seen as mildly more restrictive than current pooling standards, particularly having more impact on VA loans, which unlike FHA, have no seasoning requirement to qualify for streamline refinancing, said Jeana Curro, bank research analyst. Under new guidance issued last month, in order to be pooled into standard Ginnie I or Ginnie II multi-issuer pools, streamline refi loans must show...
Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement amount to ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. to resolve allegations of fraud related to insurance on a collateralized debt obligation backed by subprime mortgages. Details of the Abacus CDO settlement were not disclosed, although ACA initially sought $120 million in damages. First filed in 2011, ACA’s lawsuit accused Goldman Sachs and hedge fund Paulson & Co. of fraudulently persuading it to guarantee payments on the CDO prior to the financial crisis. ACA alleged...
In case you didn’t know it, the Irvine, CA-based Citadel now services roughly $650 million in nonprime loans. Angel Oak and Deephaven use subservicers…
The primary mortgage insurance market remained on track for its best year ever during the third quarter of 2016, as the government-insured sectors gained some ground on private MIs, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. Mortgage lenders originated a record $220.46 billion of home loans with some form of primary MI during the third quarter, a 16.6 percent increase from the previous period. That brought year-to-date primary MI activity to $553.77 billion, just $92.40 billion less than the all-time annual record of $646.17 billion set in 2015. The government-insured market – mostly FHA and VA – was...[Includes three data tables]
Come February 1 of next year, Fannie Mae will temporarily halt bulk transfers of mortgage servicing rights as it upgrades its reporting systems, a change the industry has known about for quite some time, but one that still promises to cause headaches. The moratorium runs from Feb. 1, 2017, through March 31, according to Fannie lender letter LL-2016-01, at a time when seller-servicers are implementing new investor reporting requirements. The government-sponsored enterprise is advising servicers that if they want to avoid disruption they “should not propose post-delivery servicing transfer effective dates that fall during” the two months. According to investment bankers that buy and sell servicing rights for a living, the moratorium can be worked...
The question of whether FHA should do another mortgage insurance premium reduction is pretty much on stakeholders’ minds as they anticipate the release of the annual actuarial review of the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund next week. Analysts, however, are not ready to change their opinion that further MIP cuts are unlikely. Some analysts said they would reconsider their views if the upcoming report showed strong growth in the MMI Fund, while others believe FHA’s priorities today are different than they were in early 2015, when the agency cut the annual premium for forward mortgages to 0.85 percent. The FHA’s decision to lower the annual MIP was spurred...
Don’t expect any rapid changes to the charters of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After all, GSE reform is hard. At least that’s the message of some market watchers.
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