The Federal Housing Finance Agency issued an interim rule last week that changed some of the components of its Freedom of Information Act regulation, including the fee categories. The interim rule gives notice about the circumstances in which the FHFA can extend its response time to the FOIA request and tells when it should notify the person requesting the information about their right to seek dispute resolution services. In the new FOIA rule, the agency is required to provide a minimum of 90 days for requestors to file an administrative appeal and must notify requesters about available dispute resolution services.
Perceived flaws in the current and proposed GSE credit-risk transfers are explored in a recent blog posting by Tim Howard, former Fannie Mae executive. He said that the GSE CRTs are too expensive and Fannie has too much first-loss exposure in its Connecticut Avenue Securities structure before it takes effect. Howard also said that because the risk-transfer tranches can prepay and amortize over time, they most likely won’t be outstanding long enough to absorb many of the losses that exceed the first-loss limit. As an example, Howard pointed to Fannie’s CAS prospectus, which shows no losses transferred to investors in more than 60 different scenarios of combined credit loss and prepayment rates...
MBA: Don’t Bet on GSE PSPA Change. Mortgage Bankers Association President Dave Stevens said this week he expects no movement by the Trump Treasury Department to modify the preferred stock purchase agreements governing the GSE bailouts that would allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to build retained capital. In an interview with IMFnews, Stevens – who has been in touch with the new administration on GSE reform – noted that the PSPAs do not necessarily require the payment of GSE dividends to Treasury on a quarterly basis. (A commitment fee payment may be required though.)Smaller trade groups – though not the MBA – have asked the Federal Housing Finance...
Sometime during the second quarter of 2019, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will begin issuing the new uniform MBS, a completely fungible security that will replace the separate to-be-announced MBS currently issued by the two government-sponsored entities. The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced the deployment date for Release 2 of the single-security initiative this week. The new implementation date was moved back from the previous estimate of some time in 2018. The delay was...
Housing finance reform, especially if it weakens mortgage underwriting standards, could have a negative impact on private-label MBS as well as the government-sponsored enterprises’ credit risk-transfer transactions, according to a newly published report from Moody’s Investor Services. Analysts said that various reform proposals could reduce the influence that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have in the market and likely increase credit risk in new MBS in the short-term. Combined with a rising interest rate environment, such reform could have a credit-negative effect. Loan origination processes and the kinds of loans produced could become...
Congress should pass legislation setting uniform standards for qualified mortgages, according to the U.S. Mortgage Insurers trade group. USMI raised particular concerns about differences in the points-and-fees calculation for FHA mortgages compared with the standard for mortgages delivered to the government-sponsored enterprises. As required by the Dodd-Frank Act, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau established standards for QMs. Certain federal regulators, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, were allowed to implement QM standards that differed from the CFPB standards. USMI noted...
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