First-time homebuyers could benefit from mortgages with downpayment requirements as low as 3.0 percent, but high fees on such products tend to limit their originations, according to qualitative survey results from the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. The government-sponsored enterprises are set to roll out products that allow combined loan-to-value ratios as high as 97.0 percent, competing with the 96.5 percent combined LTV ratio limit for certain purchase mortgages guaranteed by the FHA. In recent years, the GSEs generally have allowed for combined LTV ratios as high as 95.0 percent. “Agents commonly believe...

The outgoing chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week urged the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency to look to a final resolution of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while the progressives on the panel pressed the regulator and former Democrat congressman hard to approve principal reductions. “Everyone agrees that conservatorship cannot continue forever, so I hope my colleagues will keep working towards a more certain future for the housing market,” said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-SD, during a hearing with FHFA Director Mel Watt this week. But if “Congress cannot agree on a smooth, more certain path forward I urge you, Director Watt, to engage the Treasury Department in talks to end the conservatorship.” Watt did not address...

The two GSEs have been in conservatorship for six-plus years now, with no legislative solution to their future in sight.

For the first nine months of 2014, the group reported $10.94 billion in net mortgage-banking income, a stunning 43 percent decline from the same period in 2013

Fannie Mae recently loosened its credit standards on condominium loans. What's next?

In 2015, the team at the GSE common securitization platform will focus on implementation of the remaining software components...

Although Wells Fargo officially exited the broker market two years ago, it apparently still does a tiny amount of business through the channel.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to trim their retained holdings of MBS and unsecuritized mortgages in keeping with their conservatorship mandate as the two government-sponsored enterprises each posted a profit during the third quarter of 2014. The two GSEs ended September with a combined $851.71 billion in mortgage-related holdings, down 2.4 percent from the previous quarter. Compared to a year ago, their combined mortgage portfolio was down 16.0 percent and down 46.5 percent from the $1.592 trillion the two firms held in the fourth quarter of 2008 shortly after being placed in government conservatorship. One of the conditions of the conservatorship the GSEs entered six years ago was...[Includes one data chart]

Through the first nine months of 2014, Freddie Mac securitized $7.0 billion of re-performing and modified single-family loans, a figure that towers over its crosstown rival Fannie Mae. Since 2011, Freddie has issued roughly $12 billion in securities backed by re-performing loans. So what’s Fannie’s problem in this area? That’s hard to say. A spokesman for the government-owned mortgage giant said the company has yet to undertake any securitizations of formerly delinquent loans, and isn’t sure if or when it will. Then again, Fannie – unlike Freddie – has...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the government-sponsored enterprise model are flawed beyond repair, so expect comprehensive housing finance reform to remain stalled until lawmakers and the chief executive take action, according to the former head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Speaking at an American Enterprise Institute forum this week, former FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco, now a housing fellow at the Milken Institute, said the structure of the GSE conservatorships and the Treasury support agreement backing them requires Congressional intervention. “The answer to the question ‘what happens next?’ is...