The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to make some significant, but as yet unspecified, changes to its mortgage servicing rule sometime this fall, in response to concerns raised by the industry, the bureau revealed in a blog posting about its latest semiannual rulemaking agenda. The agency said it is “considering concerns raised by industry participants regarding a few substantive aspects of the mortgage servicing rule that we used in August 2016. These aspects may be posing particular complexities for implementation that were not anticipated in the course of the original rulemaking. We expect to issue a proposal to make one or more substantive changes to the rule in response to these concerns this fall – perhaps as early as September.” Edward Mills, an analyst with FBR Capital Markets & Co., said...
Pacific Investment Management Company published an opinion piece this week calling for changes in the non-agency market before policymakers enact reforms that affect the government-sponsored enterprises. PIMCO was also critical of other GSE reform proposals. “Without a functioning private mortgage market, it will be nearly impossible for the GSEs to shrink their footprint without significant disruption to the housing market and to the underlying homeownership rate,” PIMCO said. PIMCO was...
Although reform of the government-sponsored enterprises is highly unlikely this year, community lenders went to Capitol Hill this week, testifying that equal opportunity in the secondary market and preserving the cash window are sacred tenets that cannot be compromised. At a GSE reform hearing late this week, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-ID, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, called small lenders “fixtures in their communities” with local knowledge and expertise. “As we prepare to reform the system we must understand how small lenders access the market,” he said. Many community lenders access...
Since the introduction of the single-security effort, pricing differences between Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MBS have just about been eliminated, thanks in part to prepayment speeds converging. A paper recently published by the Urban Institute found that back in 2012 and 2013, Freddie’s 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 percent coupons traded at more than a $0.30 discount to Fannie Mae’s. But, by 2014 and 2015 that number narrowed to about $0.15, and by early 2017 the pricing differences had largely come together. The authors called...
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