Fannie Mae Gets Interim CEO. Fannie Mae announced this week that it has appointed Hugh Frater as interim chief executive officer. Frater's appointment will be effective on Oct. 16, 2018, subject to final approval from the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency published its 2019 annual performance plan last week for overseeing the GSEs and Federal Home Loan Banks next year. The performance plan supports the FHFA’s long-range strategic plan, and includes goals, performance measures and targets, and strategies to accomplish those goals.
Fannie Mae recently sold its three Northern Virginia buildings as part of its plan to consolidate the 1.5 million square feet it has in office space in Virginia into one central hub. The buildings were sold to MRP Realty and Artemis Real Estate Partners. But Fannie will continue to occupy the buildings until its new 8,500 square foot headquarters at Reston Gateway, also in Virginia, is completed in 2022.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency recently issued guidance to the GSEs and Federal Home Loan Banks on managing interest rate volatility and third-party provider relationships. The regulator wants firm policies in place to manage the risks posed by changing interest rates and cautioned that excessive interest rate risk can threaten liquidity, earnings, capital and solvency.
Freddie Mac closed on a low-income housing tax credit sale late last week after reentering the market for the first time in a decade. Up until the fourth quarter of last year, the GSEs haven’t been allowed to participate in the LIHTC market since they’ve been in conservatorship.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both recently announced the winners of their latest nonperforming loan auctions, which included eight separate pools amounting to $2.4 billion. The largest sale was from Fannie and consisted of 10,300 loans totaling $1.88 billion divided among five pools, all won by MTGLQ Investors, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.
Fannie Mae is looking to make about 22 changes to its duty-to-serve plan and the Federal Housing Finance Agency wants input on four of them. Both Fannie and Freddie Mac released their duty-to-serve underserved markets plans for 2018-2020 in December 2017. DTS is aimed at financing for low- and moderate-income families.
Freddie Mac will begin purchasing community land trust mortgages next month to help support affordable housing efforts. Lenders have been reluctant to make loans on these shared equity homeownership programs because they considered them riskier and had to keep them in their portfolio.
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