Freddie Mac announced late last month that it had closed a deal with RBC Capital Markets to create a $180 million low-income housing tax credit fund. The fund, Freddie’s fourth LIHTC deal since re-entering the market last year after a decade’s absence, has already made several investments.
Freddie Mac last week announced that Sara Mathew has been elected non-executive chair of the company’s board of directors. Mathew, who currently chairs the board’s audit committee, will replace Christopher Lynch, who’s term-limited out after 10 years on the board, six of them as chair.
After a year and a half of following its carefully scripted plan to normalize its balance sheet and return to good, old-fashioned monetary policy, the Federal Reserve muddied the waters at last week’s meeting of the Federal Open Markets Committee.
Redwood Trust last week announced that it would invest as much as $78 million in a partnership seeking to acquire up to $1 billion in floating rate light-renovation whole loans from Freddie Mac. The California-based real estate investment trust says it has already funded the partnership to the tune of $20 million.
Investors Unite, a group of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders seeking to reverse the so-called net profit sweep — the mechanism by which the Federal Housing Finance Agency sends all GSE profits to the Treasury as dividends — held a sort of figurative rally last week to celebrate a recent string of legal victories.
In a joint letter sent late last month, Maxine Waters, D-CA, chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Sherrod Brown, D-OH, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, raised serious questions about the legitimacy of Joseph Otting’s recent designation as acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Mark Calabria, the White House nominee to be the next permanent director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, will get a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Feb. 14. The SBC released the hearing schedule for Calabria and other nominees late Thursday.
Sen. Mike Crapo, chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, stirred the GSE pot last week by issuing his outline on how to restructure the nation’s housing-finance system. While short on details, the blueprint appears to contain a little something for everyone. That just might make it a good starting point for bipartisan negotiations on legislative reform.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued a combined total of just $51.86 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities in January, their lowest monthly production since February 2016. [Includes two data charts.]
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