The mortgage market has paid close attention to a lawsuit brought by PHH Mortgage that challenges the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Trump administration’s recent move to side with the mortgage lender. Now, the Treasury Department is making a similar argument that the structure of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is also unconstitutional. Both the CFPB and FHFA, the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are independent agencies led by a single director whom the president can only fire for cause. In an advisory filed March 24, the Treasury backed...
FHA-insured jumbo lending fell slightly in the fourth quarter of 2016 although year-over-year results were a lot better. Production of conforming-jumbo purchase and refinance loans insured by the FHA slipped 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter, a slight bump on the way to an annual jumbo origination total of $26.9billion. Year-over-year, FHA jumbo production was up 5.6 percent from 2015. Conforming-jumbo loans represented 9.8 percent of FHA loans securitized last year, according to data compiled by affiliated newsletter Inside Mortgage Finance. Purchase mortgages comprised 64.9 percent of jumbo loans insured by FHA in 2016 and 98.7 percent were fixed-rate loans. Nonbanks comprised the top five FHA jumbo lenders. Wells Fargo, which closed the year with $423.8 million in FHA jumbo originations, was in sixth place. Quicken Loans led the field with $802.5 million of ... [ Charts ]
However, on Wednesday, five members of the Senate Banking Committee wrote to FHFA Director Mel Watt, warning him against taking any administrative action that might alter the dividend payment.
But the issue is hardly settled. Ron Haynie, senior vice president of mortgage policy at the ICBA, told Inside Mortgage Finance that he expects a change in the dividend payment this year.
The GSEs have developed proposals to more closely align their mortgage insurance master policies with their reps-and-warranties policies, which will be reviewed by the FHFA this year.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “made significant progress” in meeting the goals of their conservatorships for 2016, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Most of the objectives set by the so-called scorecard were focused on testing new concepts or perfecting existing ones, and relatively few of them had hard targets in terms of business volume. A first strategic goal for the government-sponsored enterprises was to maintain credit availability, including increasing access to credit. There has been barely any change in the credit profile of the two GSEs’ business, and the regulator did not set any specific goals other than the affordable housing goals. And some critics would argue that the FHFA hasn’t done much to encourage more risk taking in that it has held guarantee fees steady. Last year, both Fannie and Freddie started...
Joe Farr, director of marketing for MBS Quoteline, said MBS prices have actually improved since the Federal Reserve’s decision to hike rates one week ago.
Since 2012 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have provided the government with a hefty amount of funds thanks to the Treasury sweep of GSE profits, which could be a perverse disincentive to move forward on housing finance reform. The two government-sponsored enterprises expected to pass along a combined $9.97 billion during the first quarter of 2017, the net profits they earned in the fourth quarter that exceeded the $600 million cap on retained capital. That brings...
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