New legal requirements enacted in the state of New York in the wake of the financial crisis pose particular compliance challenges for mortgage servicers, according to a new report by analysts at S&P Global Ratings. The S&P team recently reviewed a series of laws the state legislature passed in June that attempts to address several issues related to “zombie” foreclosures, which refers to the phenomenon of a servicer initiating foreclosure on a vacant property but not going so far as to actually take title. Urban community activists complain such properties languish unsold for a prolonged period of time, contributing to neighborhood blight in communities least able to handle it – hence, state lawmakers decided to act.One resulting requirement “imposes conditions ...
Commercial banks and savings institutions continued to load up on residential MBS during the second quarter of 2016, pushing their investment in the sector to a new high, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. Banks and thrifts reported MBS holdings of $1.684 trillion as of the end of June, a 1.4 percent increase since the previous quarter. These are long-term holdings in banks’ held-to-maturity and available-for-sale portfolios. The industry held another $46.02 billion of MBS in their trading accounts. Not surprisingly, all of the gain came in agency MBS, particularly pass-through securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The industry’s aggregate holdings of these securities, $867.64 billion, were up 4.1 percent from the ...
Fannie Mae has re-claimed some lost market share in the prized first-time homebuyer market during the first half of 2016, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis and ranking. Fannie securitized $41.70 billion of first-time buyer purchase loans in the first six months of this year. That represented 28.4 percent of the total FTHB business securitized by the three agencies, up from 27.8 percent for all of last year. Freddie Mac, however, is still playing catch-up. The GSE accounted for 17.0 percent of the agency FTHB market, compared to 17.8 percent in 2015. The top securitizer of first-timer loans remained Ginnie Mae, with a 54.6 percent share of the sector.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency raised the 2016 lending caps for multifamily by $1.5 billion this week. As momentum in the space continues to grow, the cap is now set at $36.5 billion each for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.The agency last raised the caps in May, from $31 billion to $35 billion. The current combined cap of $73 billion is already 22 percent more than the combined cap for all of 2015, which was $60 billion. This adjustment is based on growing estimates of the overall size of the 2016 multifamily finance market and part of FHFA’s plan to review the market quarterly.
Access to homeownership has been cut short for African-Americans who made up a smaller share of GSE-eligible loan originations over the past decade or so, according to the National Association of Real Estate Brokers.In a report released this week, the minority-based trade group analyzed data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, covering 2004-2014, and concluded that African-American families continue to lose ground in the mortgage market. The NAREB report said that mortgage loans given to African-American borrowers have a lower chance of being sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, compared with loans obtained by non-Hispanic white borrowers.
Freddie Mac recently formed a Manufactured Housing Initiative Task Force as the result of manufactured housing advocates pushing for greater support from the GSEs, especially in the form of chattel lending. The group met for the first time in late July in Reston, VA. The meeting came after a comment letter from the Manufactured Housing Institute on the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s duty-to-serve rule, which was followed by an invitation from MHI to discuss chattel loans at an MHI meeting in May. In December, the FHFA issued a proposed rule to implement the “duty-to-serve” provisions included in the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.
Although the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recent stress test results showing that the GSEs could need up to $125 billion in a severe economic crisis, quarterly earnings continue to show a profitability that cancels out the need for a bailout. Required annually by the Dodd-Frank Act, the test of severely adverse scenario is based on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac portfolios as of Dec. 31, 2015. …
A personal relationship between Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos and Heather Russell, the chief legal officer for Fifth Third Bancorp, caused the bank to terminate its top lawyer because of conflict of interest concerns. Both Mayopoulos and Russell are separated from their spouses, and both revealed the relationship to their respective companies. “Mr. Mayopoulos previously disclosed the relationship to Fannie Mae’s Office of Compliance and Ethics. The Office of Compliance and Ethics provided appropriate direction to Mr. Mayopoulos, and he followed it,” according to a spokesman for Fannie. “Further, Mr. Mayopoulos has no involvement in Fannie Mae’s relationship with Fifth Third Bank. Quite simply, there is no conflict of interest under Fannie Mae’s corporate policies,” said the spokesman.
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