Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have a harder time recapitalizing if their deferred tax assets are negatively impacted by corporate tax reform, according to one GSE spectator....

Subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs (MTGLQ Investors) and Balbec Capital (Igloo Series II Trust) were the winning bidders of Fannie Mae's latest nonperforming loan sale announced this week. The four pools included a total of about 9,400 loans with an unpaid principal balance of $1.68 billion....

Virtually all the shrinkage in 2016 took place among the four megabanks with over $1 trillion in assets: Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citibank.

New issuance of single-family mortgage-backed securities by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fell 30.6 percent from January to February as the refinance business continued to weaken.The two GSEs issued a combined $63.67 billion of single-family MBS last month, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis and ranking. Absent a heavy refi flow, February is typically the low point in the annual cycle. A year ago, combined Fannie/Freddie production totaled just $50.05 billion in February. Production in the first two months of 2017 was up 45.7 percent from the same period last year, with big gains in both purchase (up 42.7 percent) and refi business (up 57.7 percent). But while purchase-mortgage lending is...

The government has until April 17 to prove that the 11,000 documents it is withholding are correctly labeled as “privileged.” This week, a ruling by Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney ordered the government to review the documents and release those that are non-privileged to the plaintiff’s attorneys in Fairholme Funds Inc. et al., v. The United States. The order came on the heels of a January appeals court ruling that found the bulk of a batch of 56 documents the government refused to turn over to the plaintiff’s attorneys, after being ordered to do so last year, did not merit privilege treatment. They included various memos, emails and presentations from the Treasury, Federal Housing...

Three prominent GSE reform proposals have been floated over the past year and the Urban Institute said they have more commonalities than differences. In an attempt to clarify some of the choices presented in the reform proposals, Jim Parrott, senior fellow at the UI, penned a paper highlighting the similarities and zeroing in on the differences. …

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have a harder time recapitalizing if their deferred tax assets are negatively impacted by corporate tax reform, according to one GSE spectator. The Trump administration said it plans to restructure taxes before housing reform. Industry observers, like former Fannie Mae CFO Tim Howard, speculate on what impact that would have on Fannie and Freddie. Howard said that putting housing reform behind tax reform adds a “complication to the task of ultimately recapitalizing the companies, should that be what [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin chooses to do.” Mnuchin recently made public comments on network news stating that while housing reform is one of his priorities, it’s going to take more time.

Freddie Mac implemented a few underwriting changes that went into effect this week regarding a borrower’s self-employment status, retirement accounts and commission income. The GSE announced that the documentation required for self-employed borrowers will be revised based on the number of years the borrower has been self-employed and the business has been in existence. Borrowers self-employed for less than five years will face greater scrutiny under the new requirement. Borrowers who are self-employed and have had a business operation for at least five years will require one year of personal and business returns. But those who have been self-employed with business in operation for less...

Preventing GSE guarantee fees from being used as income for unrelated government spending has been an ongoing battle. In the latest attempt to block this from happening, more than a dozen mortgage and housing groups sent a joint letter in support of the Risk Management and Homeowner Stability Act. H.R. 916, introduced by Reps. Mark Sanford, R-SC, and Brad Sherman, D-CA, was created to stop g-fees from being tapped for non-housing programs. The Mortgage Bankers Association, Community Mortgage Lenders of America, the American Bankers Association and U.S. Mortgage Insurers are among the 14 groups that signed the letter. They argue that increasing g-fees for other purposes imposes an...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac multifamily lending is booming and hit a record high in 2016, but how long will that streak last? Some say the supply and demand dynamics are changing as developers rushed to build to meet a growing demand that may be leveling off some this year.Fannie ended last year having provided $55.3 billion in financing and support of the multifamily market. In 2016, Freddie financed $56.8 billion in loan purchases and bond guarantees. “Credit performance of the book of business was strong in 2016. The number of multifamily foreclosed properties held for sale remained low at 13 properties as of December 31, 2016,” reported Fannie.