Credit unions and some others in the industry are apprehensive about the changes the GSEs’ Common Securitization Platform will bring as the date nears for Freddie Mac to issue the first mortgage-backed security on the system. The National Association of Federal Credit Unions wrote the Federal Housing Finance Agency last week citing concerns about the CSP’s potential impact on credit unions. While the trade group said it is not opposed to creating a more efficient platform with an open architecture to support multiple issuers, Ann Kossachev, NAFCU’s counsel, worries about a level playing field. “NAFCU and its member credit unions are concerned that the consolidation of the securitization programs will make it more difficult for...
The analysis, the first of its kind, was based on new Inside Mortgage Finance surveys that drew results from a broad sample of banks and nonbanks of all size classifications.
Individual investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock lost separate legal battles to inspect the corporate records of Freddie and prove that the Treasury sweep of the government-sponsored enterprises’ profits is damaging and unjust. In the case of Arnetia Joyce Robinson v. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, et al., the shareholder plaintiff argued that her investments were materially damaged when FHFA and the Treasury Department implemented the net worth sweep back in 2012. Robinson argued...
Bank of New York Mellon has expanded its servicing oversight business by looking beyond the shrinking non-agency MBS market. The company recently started handling reporting duties for many small servicers on mortgages serviced for the government-sponsored enterprises. For 25 years, BNY Mellon has been a master servicer on non-agency MBS. The role involves oversight of primary servicers. BNY Mellon’s master servicing portfolio for non-agency MBS has declined along with the total amount of non-agency MBS outstanding. The firm handled...
Recent nonperforming loan activity at the GSEs includes billion dollar transactions in which Fannie Mae revealed the winning bidders of its seventh NPL auction and Freddie Mac marketed its first multi-servicer NPL sale. Subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs, Neuberger Berman, Lone Star and MFA were the winning bidders of Fannie’s latest nonperforming loan sale, totaling $1.06 billion. The GSE announced last week that it had sold 6,800 mortgages total, in four separate pools. Goldman’s MTGLQ Investors won the largest chunk, 2,887 loans with an aggregate unpaid principal balance of $468,901,523. Neuberger’s PRMF Acquisition LLC won the second pool, 1,551 loans, and Lone Star’s...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency seeks comments on its National Survey of Mortgage Originations proposal to collect information from 24,000 borrowers annually about their experience with choosing and taking on a mortgage. Formerly known as the National Survey of Mortgage Borrowers, the FHFA renamed it earlier this summer to avoid confusion with the American Survey of Mortgage Borrowers. The ASMB is different in that it’s FHFA’s tool to solicit information specifically on the borrower’s experience with maintaining their existing mortgage. “In particular, the NSMO provides timely information on newly-originated mortgages and those borrowing that is not available from existing sources,” said the FHFA.
A GSE investor in Kentucky lost her case last week when the court dismissed claims that the government damaged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by implementing the net worth sweep of the GSEs’ profits. Arnetia Robinson alleged that her investments in Fannie and Freddie were “materially damaged” when the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Treasury Department amended the existing preferred stock purchase agreement in 2012. According to court records, Robinson was seeking declaratory and injunctive relief that would prevent enforcement of portions of the PSPA. She contended that the sweep violates the Housing and Economic Recovery Act and said the Treasury acted “arbitrarily and capriciously.”
Talk of housing finance reform is just a “solution in search of a problem,” according to one housing expert. Tim Howard, former senior executive at Fannie Mae for more than 20 years, said that with the GSEs’ loans performing well, the argument for replacing them is becoming harder to make. “It is no longer credible to claim that replacing Fannie and Freddie with an untested alternative, forcing them to do mandatory risk sharing or requiring them to hold bank-like levels of capital could possibly fix what now ails the U.S. residential mortgage market,” said Howard. He said the small size of the credit box is one of the primary problems that needs to be addressed, explaining that...
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