The Seventh Circuit Court recently reversed an earlier decision that held buyers purchasing property in Chicago from Fannie Mae were liable for state and local transfer taxes. The case involved real property transfer taxes imposed in 2013 and 2014 on purchasers who argued they were legally exempt from having to pay. The Illinois Department of Finance assessed the buyers for the tax. But since the property was purchased from a federal agency, the buyers believed they were exempt from having to pay. The buyers and Fannie then both sued the City of Chicago and asked the federal court to review the finance department’s decision.
Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos said the housing crisis has made people cautious about buying a home and that confidence in the market needs to be restored. Speaking at the Detroit Economic Club last week, Mayopoulos emphasized the need for affordable housing, calling the issue “urgent.” More than one million starter homes have been lost since the crisis, according to Mayopoulos. He pointed out that from 2012 and 2015, the most affordable one-third of homes rose 38 percent in price, and the inventory dropped by 39 percent. In addition to the decline in the number of affordable homes, he said people aren’t as comfortable in making a home purchase as they were before the crisis.
Think Tank Makes a Case for GSEs to Become SIFIs. Alex Pollock, senior fellow at the R Street Institute, along with author Thomas Stanton, wrote Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin this week urging him to designate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs).They said that it’s obvious the mortgage giants meet all the criteria specified by the Dodd-Frank Act and the Financial Stability Board for designation as SIFIs and they want the same protective capital and regulatory standards applied to the...
Language in the pending Senate tax bill that could hammer the value of mortgage servicing rights is causing grave concern in the industry and, if the wording remains, nonbank mortgage firms could get hammered financially.
Mick Mulvaney has been in charge of the CFPB all week and we’ve yet to hear one prediction that subprime mortgage lending will revive with a vengeance…
Banks and thrifts reported holding $575.4 billion of Federal Home Loan Bank advances at the end of September, a quarterly increase of 1.7 percent and the largest volume of advances in the past 12 months, according to an analysis by Inside The GSEs. That number is also well above the number of advances that were made in the third quarter of 2016. Year-over-year, third quarter advances were 6.2 percent higher than the $541.8 billion reported a year earlier. While JPMorgan Chase remains in the number one spot with $63.8 billion in advances, that was down 6.9 percent from $68.5 in the second quarter, and 19.8 percent below the level a year ago.
The new boss at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – Mick Mulvaney – wasted no time this week in beginning to steer a new course for the controversial agency.
The conforming loan limit for one-unit properties in 2018 will be $453,100, according to an an-nouncement this week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The limit for mortgages eligible to be delivered to the government-sponsored enterprises increased by 6.8 percent from the current limit.
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