The mortgage industry remains on guard and is fully prepared to rebuff further attempts by lawmakers to squeeze Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guaranty fee revenue to fund non-government-sponsored enterprise related pet projects, experts say. Congress’ passage in early 2012 of a payroll tax cut extension bill set a dangerous precedent and emboldened lawmakers to look to the GSEs as a piggy-bank by mandating an increase and using the funds to offset the costs of other programs, according to Robert Zimmer, head of external affairs at the Community Mortgage Lenders of America. “I’m shocked that I’m not hearing anything right now on diverting g-fees to other parts of the federal budget,” said Zimmer. “I think there has been some hardening in town that this is a bad idea but when [Congress is] desperate for money, anything can happen.”
Many mortgage bankers are bracing for a slowdown in originations this year, but they have an even larger concern on their hands: whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will hike their net worth minimum currently set at $2.5 million. The GSEs and their regulator have said little on the subject, but there is rampant speculation that it’s only a matter of time before higher net worth minimums are introduced – it’s just a matter of when,…
The top Democrat of the House Financial Services Committee has “concerns” and wants answers from Fannie Mae’s regulator as to why it pulled the plug on the GSE’s plans to lower the cost of force-placed insurance. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, the committee’s ranking member, dispatched a letter this week to Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Edward DeMarco seeking an explanation as to why the Finance Agency abruptly shut down a plan pushed by Fannie…
Wells Fargo last year wound up keeping almost $20 billion of new residential production its books instead of selling the loans to Fannie Mare and Freddie Mac.
MBS guaranty fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not have to increase by much from current levels to shift risk to the private sector, according to a new analysis by Andrew Davidson & Co. However, if policymakers looking to reduce the market share of the government-sponsored enterprises want to expand credit availability beyond the tight standards in the GSE market, g-fees will have to increase significantly. Fannie Mae reported that the average effective g-fee in its third quarter 2012 business was 41.8 basis points, and the GSEs raised their fees by 10 bps during the fourth quarter of last year. A report this week from the Bipartisan Policy Center Housing Commission proposed...
The proposed “Public Guarantor” to replace the government-sponsored enterprises would not only provide an explicit backstop for qualifying MBS in a post-GSE world, it would also serve as a regulator of sorts under terms spelled out in a housing policy paper issued this week. The report by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Housing Commission called for a “far greater role” for the private sector in the mortgage market, a continued but limited role for the federal government, the graduated elimination of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and reform of the FHA. The BPC’s plan calls for...
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