Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had a stellar year for their risk-sharing transactions in 2014, selling off portions of the credit risk associated with $369.7 billion of MBS, greater than four times the $84.7 billion amount seen in the prior year, according to Fitch Ratings. Meanwhile, “performance of the transactions remains exceptionally clean,” analysts at Fitch said in a new report this week. The performance seen in 2013 was based...
The U.S. Supreme Court this week denied a petition by major banks to reject a lower court decision to allow a National Credit Union Administration MBS lawsuit to go forward. The SCOTUS chose not to hear the case, a lawsuit filed by the NCUA to recover damages suffered by five now-defunct federal credit unions as a result of investments in non-agency MBS sold by the banks. The suit is...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency will unveil nonbank capital guidelines for servicers by mid-year. Also on the docket: Changes to loan level price adjustments..
New single-family business at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac declined 2.1 percent during the fourth quarter of 2014, but you can’t blame it on mortgage brokers. The two government-sponsored enterprises securitized $20.53 billion of broker loans over the final three months of the year, up 3.7 percent from the third quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loan-level mortgage-backed securities data. That gave broker loans a ... [Includes one data chart]
If 2015 is anything like 2014, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be getting over half of their single-family business from nonbanks by the end of the year. A new Inside The GSEs analysis of loan-level mortgage-backed securities data reveals that nonbanks accounted for 44.8 percent of Fannie/Freddie MBS issued in the fourth quarter of 2014. That was up from a nonbank share of 37.2 percent during the fourth quarter of 2013 and just 28.1 percent back in the first quarter of that year. As a group, nonbank sellers increased their total GSE sales by 2.9 percent from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, while the overall market declined by 2.1 percent. The biggest ... [with two exclusive charts] ...
It appears that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be slowly backing away from making large servicing advance facilities to certain nonbank customers. In a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Green Tree Servicing said it amended an existing facility it had with Barclays Bank, increasing the line to $1.2 billion from just $100 million. A subsidiary of Walter Investment Management, Green Tree then turned around and repaid Fannie Mae some $765 million on the outstanding balance of an existing advance facility. It’s unclear how large Fannie and Freddie are in the advance market, but one servicing advisor had this to say on the topic: “Fannie is the largest lender of servicer advances in the business simply through ...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency threw a few new wrinkles into its 2015 marching orders for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while sticking to major themes from 2014. Under the broad heading of maintaining credit availability, the two GSEs are expected to finish making improvements to their representation-and-warranty framework regarding loan originations, as well as continue clarifying their expectations regarding servicer performance and remedies. A new assignment for Fannie and Freddie is to assess the use of alternative credit scoring models, including operational and systems issues. The GSEs are expected to be ready to implement new duty-to-serve requirements when the FHFA implements a final rule. The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 directed the agency to issue regulations describing ...
The subject of cutting FHA premiums sucked up most of the oxygen in the room when President Barack Obama spoke about housing issues last week in Phoenix. However, the president also discussed the fate of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; he and the White House reiterated some core principles for GSE reform the president would like to see taken up in the 114th Congress. Although it is still early, the initial indications of interest from lawmakers were less than inspiring. “The president continues to strongly support long-term housing finance reform through legislation that requires private capital to take the risks and rewards in mortgage lending while preserving broad and affordable access for all creditworthy families,” the White House said in ...
The Federal Home Loan Banks have mounted strong opposition to a proposal from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that would revise standards for membership in the FHLBank system. “The proposed rule, if finalized, will fundamentally alter the FHLBanks’ relationship with their members and impair the FHLBank system’s ability to advance its congressionally-mandated mission of providing liquidity to support housing finance markets and the U.S. financial markets generally,” said John Bowman, a partner at the Venable law firm, in a comment letter submitted on behalf of the Council of FHLBanks. The FHFA issued the proposed rule in September and the comment deadline closed this week. More than 1,200 comments were submitted with community banks, real estate investment trusts, state regulators and ...
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