Beginning in December, the FHFA directly stepped into the MSR sales market, requiring its approval on all Fannie/Freddie transfers involving 5,000 loans or more. This additional level of approval initially caused concern in the market because it added another layer of oversight to sales.
Fitch said ignoring broker price opinions dramatically increased the likelihood of underestimating potential loss severities and results in insufficient credit enhancement.
Based on what Freddie's Layton said, one might think that going forward, the GSEs might barely break even. Maybe that’s why the GSEs – and not necessarily Mel Watt – want to hike their guaranty fees…
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized just $11.1 billion of refinance mortgages with high loan-to-value ratios during the first quarter of 2014, a sign that the Home Affordable Refinance Program is slowing down significantly. The first-quarter high-LTV refi market was down 37.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013 and off a hefty 78.5 percent from the $51.4 billion of business the two government-sponsored enterprises did back in the first three months of last year, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. Production was...[Includes one data chart]
The first-quarter high-LTV refi market was down 37.1 percent from the fourth quarter and off a hefty 79 percent from the $51.4 billion of business the two GSEs did back in the first three months of last year.
There’s a growing concern among participants in the secondary market that legislation in the Senate to reform the government-sponsored enterprises won’t be able to allow the to-be-announced market to function. The latest anxieties were raised by officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose securities flourish in the TBA market. Legislation in the Senate from Sens. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Mike Crapo, R-ID, calls for the preservation of the TBA market but doesn’t provide any roadmap for how the proposed Federal Mortgage Insurance Corp. should accomplish that feat. “Unless the FMIC sets...
The housing finance reform legislation authored by Sens. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Mike Crapo, R-ID, will result in higher guaranty fees and less cross-subsidization than the current Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fee structure, according to the government-sponsored enterprises. The Johnson-Crapo bill, which was abruptly pulled from a scheduled markup before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week, would establish a new type of MBS with an explicit government backstop that requires private capital to absorb the first 10 percent of losses. “There is...
Ginnie Mae issuer applications are beginning to slow thanks to declining FHA and VA production, but lenders that play in the space are beginning to wonder whether they should be paying closer attention to the “compare ratios” that measure delinquencies. According to industry advisors, there are new concerns that the Inspector General of the Department of Housing and Urban Development may be expanding its investigation of firms that have significant claims rates on FHA loans. Four years ago, the HUD IG made a big splash when it issued subpoenas to 15 mortgage lenders with unusually high claim rates. Since that announcement, little information on settlements with the 15 has come...
Concerns about the functionality of the to-be-announced market and potential incentives for riskier lending have prompted some to suggest that legislation under consideration in the Senate to reform the government-sponsored enterprises should remove the capital markets option for risk sharing and rely solely on a guarantor model. A number of agency MBS participants aren’t too pleased with the suggestions and have countered that a capital markets option is necessary in the country’s housing finance system. Under the capital markets option envisioned in the GSE reform bill from Sens. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Mike Crapo, R-ID, investors would hold...
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