Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized $135.69 billion of single-family purchase mortgages during the third quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of mortgage-backed securities disclosures by the two government-sponsored enterprises. That was up a hefty 26.2 percent from the previous quarter, and it represented the biggest quarterly flow of purchase mortgages to the GSEs since the housing market collapse. Although the loans were pooled in MBS issued during the third quarter, a significant number of them were actually originated during the April-June cycle. The third quarter typically has...[Includes three data tables]
Continued increases to home prices along with low interest rates have prompted a number of borrowers to take cash out when completing a refinance. Some 41.0 percent of refinances completed in the second quarter of 2016 resulted in a loan amount at least 5.0 percent higher than the unpaid principal balance of the original loan, according to Freddie Mac. In the second quarter of 2015, the share was 33.0 percent and between 2010 and 2013 it typically ranged from 15.0 percent to 20.0 percent, according to Freddie. The total amount of home equity cashed out has also increased...
“We hope that you will help us to push back on current efforts to gift the proprietary infrastructure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the big banks,” the clergymen write.