Sales of mortgages and non-agency mortgage-backed securities helped reduce the government-sponsored enterprises’ exposure to nonprime mortgages in 2016. As of the end of the year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac held a combined $141.45 billion in purchased/guaranteed nonprime mortgages and nonprime MBS. The holdings were down by 5.8 percent from the end of the third quarter and 22.0 percent below the level at the end of 2015 ... [Includes one data chart]
When Freddie makes that next “dividend” payment, its “account surplus” with Treasury will total $34.6 billion: federal assistance of $71.3 billion since September 2008 versus dividend payments of $105.9 billion.
Over the past two years, PHH has lost $347 million, much of it caused by a private-label origination model that has fallen on hard times and rapidly declining interest rates…
In a few weeks, almost all of that profit will be swept into the coffers of the U.S. Treasury, which supported the GSE during its money losing years...
Despite some reports of credit access loosening, it’s harder to get a mortgage today than it was during the housing bubble, according to the Urban Institute. With borrowers being denied at a much higher rate than in the past, lower-credit mortgage applicants are dropping out of the housing market. As access to credit tightened after the financial crisis, many lower-credit applicants were discouraged from applying, the UI study noted. That led to a higher-credit applicant pool, which in turn led to a lower rejection rate. This caused...
Fed Chairman Janet Yellen on the future of Fannie and Freddie: “…I would hope that Congress would decide explicitly on what the government’s role is and if there are guarantees, that they would be recognized and priced appropriately.”
RSS