Underwater homeowners who have remained current on their payments and who can demonstrate a “hardship” may be eligible to relinquish their homes, cancel their mortgage debt and avoid the messy foreclosure process under the terms of a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policy change to take effect in March. The two government-sponsored enterprises will broaden the authority of their servicers to approve a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure to non-delinquent Fannie or Freddie borrowers who can no longer afford to stay in the home. Effective March 1, the new deed-in-lieu option is...

The agency share of mortgage originations is expected to remain elevated for years to come due to profits at the government-sponsored enterprises, increasing home prices, a lack of non-agency production, and the new ability-to-repay rule, according to industry participants. The factors have combined to reduce the push for the Obama administration and Congress to take action on GSE reform. The most recent impediment to GSE reform appears to be new profits reported by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with expected profitable quarters going forward due to repurchase settlements, home price appreciation and other positive trends. “The Treasury Department has...

Residential lenders that are relatively new to the seller/servicer ranks of Fannie Mae continue to gripe about the purchase limits the GSE has placed on them, causing the agency to spell out its reasoning in an online commentary. According to a recent message posted to Fannie’s website by Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer John Nichols, the caps the GSE placed on new customers – nonbanks primarily – were caused by what the company calls a “significant shift in the composition of our customer base and the emergence of many new originating institutions with whom we have done little or no business.” He adds: “This rapid change in the marketplace prompted...

Before we get to the main event (the ‘Qualified Mortgage’ rule), it’s time to consider the improving fate of Fannie Mae, which is poised to have a few coming quarters of blow-out earnings – which will go directly into the coffers of the U.S. Treasury Department, much to the delight of the newly nominated secretary Jack Lew.

Impac Mortgage, one of the fastest growing funders among the top 100, has hired Mike Casey and Matthew Dismore to bolster its correspondent lending division.

Fannie Mae is working on building an in-house unit to value mortgage servicing rights, according to industry officials who’ve been briefed on the GSE's plans.

Depository institutions managed to trim the volume of mortgage loans they serviced for other investors during the third quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call report data.

Bank of America appears to have resolved a longstanding dispute with Fannie Mae over loan repurchases – but will not begin selling more loans to the GSE.

Forget (for now) the story about Bank of America scuttling the sale of $14 billion of high-touch mortgage servicing rights. Inside Mortgage Finance is hearing that over the past several weeks the megabank was looking to unload upwards of $300 billion in MSRs, or at least talking about it to select buyers. BofA, as we pointed out, doesn’t talk about its servicing sales, though it does acknowledge them (sometimes) in its earnings calls with analysts.…