Although the Federal Housing Finance Agency said that Freddie Mac failed to meet all of its goals for low-income homebuyers in 2014, the GSE apparently has put the wheels in motion to meet its target for 2015. But Sen. Bob Menendez, D-NJ, ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development, wrote the FHFA asking why the goals fell by the wayside.Don Layton, Freddie’s CEO, told Inside The GSEs that the GSE has been working since early in the year to make sure those goals are met. Those preparations included the hiring of Danny Gardner in March, who leads a new unit specializing in affordable housing.
FHFA Debuts FHFA Insights Blog. This week the Federal Finance Housing Agency launched a new blog titled FHFA Insights. The blog, located on the agency’s website, is designed to serve as a resource for a wide range of stakeholders, including homeowners, renters, policy makers, media and the general public. The FHFA’s most recent blog entry this week focuses on the expansion of the Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative which went into effect Dec. 1. …
Although most of the heavy lifting in writing new rules for the mortgage industry has passed, federal regulators still have some significant projects in the works, according to recently released semiannual regulatory agendas. The Federal Housing Finance Agency expects to release a proposed “duty-to-serve” regulation for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the end of this year. The rulemaking was mandated by the 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act but hasn’t gotten much attention since the agency published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking back in August 2009. The FHFA is...
In percentage terms, the sharpest downturn was in home-equity ABS, although this sector represented just 1.6 percent of bank ABS investment and there has been no new production in years.