Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt said access to credit and supporting underserved markets will be among the goals outlined for the GSEs next year. Although the FHFA will not release a 2017 GSE scorecard until yearend, Watt, speaking at this week’s annual Mortgage Bankers Association convention in Boston, offered a preview of what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will focus on in the coming year. Watt said he expects the GSEs to ramp up research efforts to increase responsible access to credit and affordable housing. He said the average credit scores for GSE purchase loans remain historically high. “Based on the work they have already done and this additional research, we’ll be asking them to...
The Congressional Budget Office said allowing the GSEs to retain a portion of their earnings could help stabilize the mortgage market and the federal budget.In a recent report studying the effects of recapitalizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the CBO concluded that while it may limit competition in the market, the benefits outweigh any potential concerns. With GSE capital levels scheduled to be depleted by 2018, there have been several legislative proposals over the past year advocating a recap. The CBO published a report in response to the proposals but put a different spin on it. The CBO created an “illustrative policy option” in which Fannie and Freddie would retain an average of $5 billion of their profits annually.
The GSEs said treating items like payoffs, holdbacks and principal curtailments as closing costs in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s disclosures would just confuse borrowers. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac submitted comments to the CFPB last week in response to the bureau’s proposed amendments to the integrated disclosure requirements under the Truth in Lending Act and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. The comments focused primarily on aspects of the proposed rule that may potentially affect the Uniform Closing Dataset developed by the GSEs. The GSEs disagreed with the proposed rule’s plan to lump non-closing cost fees under...
The Cato Institute recently filed an amicus brief challenging the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s denial of compensation benefits to a former Freddie Mac CFO at the start of the conservatorship. The FHFA terminated Anthony Piszel two weeks after the government took over the GSEs in September 2008. The primary issue was whether a government prohibition on making golden parachute (severance) payments to terminated Freddie employees was illegal or not. Piszel appealed a judgment from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims dismissing his complaint that Freddie breached its contract and owed him payment for his golden parachute compensation.
Housing Finance Agency’s proposal to loosen regulation of new business activities by the Federal Home Loan Banks generally showed support for the changes but recommended further exclusions from the definition of “new business activities.” The comment period ended on Oct. 24 and the FHLBanks commended the FHFA for its “thoughtful proposal.” Nevertheless, it noted that it would still like to see the agency adopt proposed enhancements to the new business activity regulation. Back in 2013, the FHLBanks wrote the FHFA about their concerns with the burden of existing regulations. The FHLBanks said that the broad scope of the rule requires them to spend a large amount of time and effort determining whether a proposed activity is...
Fairholme Files Motion to Force Government to Produce Docs ASAP. Plaintiffs in Fairholme Funds Inc. v. United States, et al, filed an emergency enforcement motion this week arguing that the government is purposely taking too long to produce documents and requesting unnecessary extensions. “The defendant has repeatedly delayed complying with the court’s order,” said Fairholme in the court documents. The judge gave the government until Nov. 1 to produce the documents. Freddie prices $217M K-deal. Freddie Mac priced a new offering of Structured Pass-Through Certificates (K Certificates) that are backed by underlying collateral consisting of supplemental multifamily mortgages. The company expects to issue approximately $217 million in K Certificates, which...
Nonbanks crossed a key threshold during 3Q16: Among the top 50 lenders, nonbanks accounted for 51.4 percent of 3Q originations – the first time these lenders grabbed more than half of the market…
The U.S. mortgage market produced an estimated $580.0 billion of first-lien originations during the third quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking. That was up 13.7 percent from the second quarter, and it marked the strongest origination cycle since the fourth quarter of 2012, when $584.0 billion of new loans flowed through the pipes. The robust third quarter brought year-to-date originations to $1.470 trillion, up 8.9 percent from the first nine months of 2015. Lender feedback and agency mortgage-backed securities data suggest...[Includes two data tables]
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