In an interview with IMFnews, Freddie CEO Don Layton defended the GSE’s move toward automated appraisals…

The Cato Institute said the former Freddie executive Anthony “Buddy” Piszel consistently received exemplary performance reviews and was cleared of any wrongdoing…

Are nonbanks 'shadow' institutions, and if so, is that a bad thing?

For the past nine years, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae have dominated the multifamily MBS sector…

Fannie Mae this week joined Freddie Mac in announcing a front-end credit-risk transfer pilot that will use additional levels of private mortgage insurance, but the so-called deep MI option looks like a long shot. “Credit-risk transfer is the next big thing, and though we’re already three years into it, it’s still very much a work in progress,” said Donald Layton, Freddie’s CEO, during the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association in Boston this week. “About 50 percent of the credit risk that’s coming in is...

Bayview Financial is set to issue the first re-securitization backed by subordinate tranches from risk-sharing deals issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fitch Ratings placed an A-minus rating on the planned $159.60 million Bayview Opportunity Master Fund IVb Trust 2016-CRT1. The transaction is backed by 12 securities from Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities transactions and Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk transactions issued in 2014 and 2015. The securities in the re-securitization are CAS M2 and STACR M3 tranches. All but one of the underlying securities rely...

Thanks to increasing market demand and two expansions of their scorecard caps courtesy of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could do more than $100 billion in combined issuance of multifamily MBS by the end of 2016 – if they have a strong December, that is. According to Inside MBS & ABS figures, Fannie’s new multifamily MBS issuance in the first nine months of 2016 was up 18.4 percent from the same period last year. Josh Seiff, vice president of multifamily capital markets and trading at Fannie, was...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should post stellar third quarter results. Here's why...

During the third quarter, total Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac servicing related to single-family mortgage-backed securities nudged slightly higher, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis and ranking.The two GSEs had a combined $4.5 trillion in single-family MBS outstanding at the end of September. That was up 0.4 percent from the previous quarter, but down 0.4 percent from a year ago. Total GSE single-family servicing is somewhat higher because both Fannie and Freddie have retained portfolios of unsecuritized mortgages. Fannie MBS servicing was actually down 0.2 percent during the third quarter and off 2.3 percent from September 2015. Freddie servicing was up 1.6 percent for the quarter and up...

This week, Fannie Mae launched an initiative that guarantees to alleviate buyback fears on certain loan components for lenders using its underwriting and appraisal tools. Fannie will also automate key processes of verifying loans, including income, through Desktop Underwriter’s new validation service.Under Day 1 Certainty, Fannie said lenders would be relieved from most representations-and-warranty risk related to verifying a borrower’s income, assets and employment using DU. “Those are the big ones,” a Fannie spokesman told Inside The GSEs. He said, “It validates right there and they are good to go,” adding that this is the kind of innovation that helps makes possible programs like Quicken’s Rocket Mortgage.