Don’t expect much movement on legislation to reform the GSEs before the 2016 presidential election. Industry analysts suggest that divisions between Democrats and Republicans along with a housing finance system that is functioning well enough will continue to combine to prevent enactment of GSE reform for some time. At the ABS East conference sponsored by Information Management Network last week in Miami, a variety of industry participants seemed resigned to the fact that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will remain under the conservatorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency for years to come. James Lockhart, vice chairman of WL Ross & Co. and a former director of the FHFA, said the enactment of GSE reform...(Chart, GSE Activity by State)
As energy efficiency plays a growing role in real estate and mortgage credit, Freddie Mac decided to up the ante in its multifamily business and offer a $5,000 green rebate to borrowers. Qualified borrowers with at least 20 units who voluntarily provide an Energy Star score when submitting their loan documents, are eligible. Freddie said it hopes to encourage energy efficiency and affordability in apartment properties and strengthen the market for green investments. Freddie also said rental housing is home to many of the country’s lower-income households who are struggling with housing costs such as rent and utilities. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the average commercial building wastes 30 percent of the energy it consumes, often resulting in higher operating costs.
Freddie Mac has offered $4.517 billion in non-performing loans to date and recently released plans to auction $327 million of deeply delinquent non-performing loans in its portfolio. The NPLs are marketed as two geographically diversified pools with bids due from qualified investors by Oct. 6, 2015. The sale is expected to settle in December 2015. JPMorgan Chase Bank is the servicer of the loans. The day after Freddie began marketing that transaction it announced that it sold roughly $1.2 billion of deeply delinquent agency mortgages serviced by Ocwen Loan Servicing, with servicing expected to be transferred after settlement. That sale was part of Freddie's Standard Pool Offerings and the loans have been delinquent for approximately three and a half years, on average.
FHFA-OIG Indictment in Baltimore Mortgage Fraud Case. Two men were sentenced for providing false information to mortgage lenders to enable buyers to qualify for 18 home mortgage loans in Baltimore that they could not afford. Sixteen of the 18 loans went into default, resulting in foreclosures and losses of about $1.2 million to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and certain mortgage lenders. Fitch: Fannie’s Loan Losses Slightly Lower Than Freddie’s for Some Cohorts. In an analysis of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan-level loss data, Fitch Ratings concluded that, while similar, there are differences between loss severities among loans with similar profiles. Fannie disclosed its loan-level loss data in late July to
Both of the government-sponsored enterprises are on track to meet the 2015 risk-sharing goals established by the Federal Housing Finance Agency with a quarter of the year to spare. Officials at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHFA said the GSEs will continue to work to expand the risk-sharing efforts, which are popular among many investors in the secondary market. At the ABS East conference produced by Information Management Network last week in Miami, Scott Smith, an associate director of capital policy at the FHFA, said he would like to see continued efforts to broaden the investor base for risk-sharing transactions. More than 160 investors have bought...
Freddie Mac reported that its first-time homebuyer business is growing and is on target to match its best year in the space since the beginning of the housing crisis. During the first half of 2015, lenders have delivered an average of 17,000 first-time homebuyer mortgages per month to the government-sponsored enterprise. That’s roughly the pace for last year but 25 percent higher than in 2013. Overall, the National Association of Realtors said...[Includes one data table]
The supply of home mortgage debt outstanding started growing again during the second quarter of 2015, thanks to relatively strong growth in retained portfolios, according to an Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of new data from the Federal Reserve and other sources. The Fed reported late last week that $9.901 trillion of single-family mortgage debt was outstanding as of the end of June. That was up 0.4 percent from March and represented the biggest supply of mortgage servicing since the third quarter of 2013. The servicing market had been shrinking...[Includes two data tables]
American Advisors Group ranked first among all reverse mortgage originators in the first half, funding $1.2 billion. None of the top 15 are depositories.
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