The quality of the GSEs’ portfolios continues to improve as the credit quality of new single-family business remains strong and delinquencies are down, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s performance and accountability report for fiscal year 2016. But the agency said potential for a Treasury draw still looms. The report, released last week covers from October 2015 to September 2016 and highlights performance goals from the year. The average new single-family loan holds a weighted average credit score in the high 740s. There’s been a big improvement in delinquencies as loans that were seriously delinquent dropped considerably, down to 321,000. That’s a 25 percent decrease from a year earlier, when there were 426,000 seriously delinquent loans.

The GSEs’ credit-risk sharing program has expanded over the years but not everyone has been fond of the transactions designed to transfer risk away from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Tim Howard, a former Fannie CFO, has become one of the program’s biggest critics. He said today’s credit-risk transfer program, mandated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, removes the “normal economic discipline” of a company making its own decisions about which risks to keep and which ones to share, and on what terms. He said that the CRT transactions being done today are nothing like those done during his time at Fannie, before the start of the conservatorship.

With potential increases in loan production on the horizon, Freddie Mac introduced a pilot program aimed at getting more mortgage lenders prepared to originate manufactured housing loans and buyers prepared to purchase them. The GSE will partner with Next Step Network, a nonprofit specializing in manufactured home purchases, and eHome America, an online home counseling company, to implement the curriculum. One of the goals of the initiative is to foster new relationships with active participants in the manufactured housing industry. This includes national and local mortgage lenders.Next Step is based in Kentucky, a state heavy in manufactured housing. Freddie said the partnership with Next Step will educate prospective buyers of...

FHFA 2017 Multifamily Lending Caps Unchanged: The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that the 2017 multifamily lending caps for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will remain at the same level they were for 2016. Each will be subject to a cap of $36.5 billion of multifamily purchase volume. The FHFA expects the multifamily finance market to be roughly the same as it was in 2016. Fannie Bans Plywood in Foreclosures. Fannie Mae recently banned the use of plywood to secure vacant homes. Beginning early this month Fannie property foreclosures must be secured by a plywood alternative, such as clear boarding.

After much speculation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency raised the 2017 conforming loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages to $424,100. This is the first time the loan limit climbed above $417,000 in 10 years.

Fairholme Funds officials this week continued to press their case for restoring shareholder rights for private investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, expressing hope that the incoming Trump administration will be friendlier to their cause.

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th president may open a path out of conservatorship for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some investors in the two government-sponsored enterprises believe. According to interviews conducted with GSE investors, industry lobbyists, trade group officials and others, a “recap and release” plan backed by the junior preferred shareholders of Fannie and Freddie could formally be presented to the Trump administration early next year. There hasn’t...

The Federal Communications Commission last week denied a request from the Mortgage Bankers Association to exempt calls from mortgage servicers to borrowers from provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Officials at the MBA said the denial was unexpected. Among other issues, the petition had received some support from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The TCPA and FCC rules prohibit...

President-elect Donald Trump’s business background could help address two of the biggest challenges confronting the housing finance industry today: limited credit availability and a shortage in the supply of the housing stock, according to Laurie Goodman, director of the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. “Mortgage credit availability is an issue we have repeatedly written about,” said Goodman in a recent online blog post. Some of her previous research has shown that “the market is taking less than half the credit risk it was taking during 2001, a period of reasonable credit standards,” she noted. And other HFPC research has shown...

The baseline conforming loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will climb to $424,100 in 2017, the first such increase since 2006. The 1.7 percent increase reflected a gain in the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s expanded-data house price index at the end of the third quarter. The new ceiling for high-cost markets will...