The Federal Housing Finance Agency isn’t providing a timetable on when it might decide the thorny issue of captive insurance companies becoming members in the Federal Home Loan Bank system. In a recent press briefing, FHFA Director Mel Watt also clarified that he is not presuming that any current members or applicants want to “abuse” their membership benefits, but said the agency must still go through the process of fielding comments on a proposal that would effectively ban captives from joining the system.Roughly 18 current members of the FHLBanks are affected by the proposed ban, seven of which are affiliated with real estate investment trusts. Captives do not write coverage outside of their own company. Traditional insurance companies that ...

Recently proposed new minimum financial eligibility requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seller/servicers – including net worth, capital ratio and liquidity criteria – appear to be less restrictive than expected but may give an edge to large nonbanks over smaller players and new entrants, analysts say.Announced Jan. 30 by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the eligibility requirements consist of three primary components. In terms of minimum net worth, the proposed requirement for all seller/servicers is a base of $2.5 million plus 25 basis points of unpaid principal balance for total loans serviced. As far as minimum capital ratio is concerned, the proposed requirement for all non-depository seller/servicers is to have tangible net worth/total assets greater than 6 percent. “Depository institutions ...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is not fulfilling its statutory responsibility to preserve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship, according to a legal analysis by former government officials. The GSE conservatorships, particularly under the current arrangement that siphons off nearly all of their earnings, violates the terms of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, said Michael Krimminger and Mark Calabria. Krimminger was formerly an expert on bank receiverships at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and Calabria was a Republican staffer at the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee when HERA was being drafted and enacted. Their paper argues that crippling Fannie and Freddie by preventing them from rebuilding capital is exactly the opposite of the way...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently affirmed that federal mortgage programs and their administrators, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are exempt statutorily exempt from state and local taxation of real property transfers. The panel – consisting of Circuit Court Judges Richard Paez, Jay Bybee and Consuelo Callahan – held that because Congress had power to regulate the secondary mortgage market, it was authorized under the “Necessary and Proper Clause” to create Fannie and Freddie and to ensure their preservation by exempting them from state and local taxes. Brought by the City of Spokane, WA, the lawsuit is part of a wave of similar filings throughout the country to challenge the GSE exemption from ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wrote a combined $56.9 billion of multifamily business in 2014, up 4.6 percent from the previous year. Fannie issued $11.4 billion in multifamily mortgage-backed securities in the fourth quarter of 2014, bringing the year’s total to $28.6 billion, mostly through its Delegated Underwriting and Servicing program. That represented a slight uptick from the previous year’s $28.5 billion. Fannie also re-securitized $2.5 billion of DUS MBS through its Guaranteed Multifamily Structures (GeMS) program in the fourth quarter. That brought total 2014 issuance in the program to $12.0 billion, making last year the biggest year for GeMS issuance since the program started. “2014 was a strong year for Fannie Mae multifamily activity on all fronts. The DUS ...

Bulletin 2015-1. Jan. 29. Freddie Mac announced its participation in an expanded Home Affordable Modification Program “Pay for Performance” incentive program. The program was developed in conjunction with Fannie Mae at the direction of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The expanded program will include HAMP’s “Year Six Pay for Performance” incentive, which provides a $5,000 lump-sum payment to help eligible borrowers with first-lien Freddie Mac loans modified under HAMP reduce their principal balance. The HAMP incentive is effective April 1, 2015. Servicing Update. Feb. 9. Freddie introduced a bulk appeal template for late foreclosure sale reporting compensatory fees. Servicers can use this template to submit multiple compensatory fee appeals at a time through Freddie’s Default Fee Appeal System. The system ...

Having a busy correspondent program helped many of the top agency mortgage sellers cultivate purchase-mortgage business in 2014, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loan-level data on loans securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. Mortgages originated by loan correspondents accounted for 35.3 percent of single-family loans securitized by the agencies last year. Retail originations were the ... [Includes two data charts]

Radian disclosed that its mortgage insurance division wrote $10.0 billion of new policies during 4Q, an 11 percent sequential decline.

Internal differences among Democrats and Republicans – let alone the strong differences between the two parties – have prevented Congress from resolving the conservatorship of the two government-sponsored enterprises, according to industry analysts. At the ABS Vegas conference this week sponsored by the Structured Finance Industry Group and Information Management Network, two people with intimate knowledge of matters in the House and Senate pointed to inter-party issues regarding GSE reform. Andrew Olmem, a partner at the law firm of Venable and a former Republican chief counsel and deputy staff director at the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs until 2013, noted...