Officials at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their regulator are encouraged by – but by no means satisfied with – the progress made by the government-sponsored enterprises and their customers at expanding the credit box. “We do see an expansion of credit, steady growth in the 97 percent [loan to value ratio] programs and a little better distribution of credit scores,” said Bob Ryan, special advisor and acting deputy director at the Federal Housing Finance Agency during remarks at the secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association in New York this week. “But they are still skewed to the higher end more than in the past.” Fannie and Freddie are trying...
Fannie Mae late last month loosened its underwriting guidelines for borrowers with student loan and other types of debt, and is currently working on pilot programs aimed at helping consumers amass a downpayment. In an interview with Inside MBS & ABS this week, Fannie Vice President of Product Development and Affordable Housing Jonathan Lawless said the government-sponsored enterprise has “more to come” on loosening guidelines. Although he could not provide much in the way of detail, he said...
In response to a question about Fannie's capital buffer, Mayopoulos said, “It’s our mission to provide liquidity in all markets at all times and we’re continuing to do that. I am glad to see that policy makers are starting to refocus on housing market reform including the lack of capital at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
The House Financial Services Committee this week approved legislation that would allow the White House to fire the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency at will and allow Congress to set the agency’s annual budget. Those provisions are included in the CHOICE Act, a Republican bill that would make sweeping changes to the Dodd-Frank Act. While the legislation is expected eventually to be cleared by the full House on a partisan vote, its fate in the Senate is murkier. FHFA Director Mel Watt’s term as chief regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ends...
After the end of the first quarter, PennyMac acquired a bulk portfolio of Ginnie Mae mortgage servicing rights with an unpaid principal balance of $4.30 billion.
The FHFA was created in part because its predecessor, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, was widely seen as lacking enough independence to adequately oversee the GSEs...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are getting more business in loans with lower credit scores and higher loan-to-value ratios, a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis reveals. Some 22.08 percent of purchase mortgages securitized by the two government-sponsored enterprises in the first quarter of this year had credit scores ranging from 620 to 699. That was up from 21.46 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, and it represented the highest ... [Includes two data charts]
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