Republican and Democrat lawmakers in the Senate formally unveiled their ambitious plan to replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a new federal entity providing backstop guaranties for securities backed by high-quality conventional mortgages. Although they made a variety of changes to a “discussion draft” version of the legislation that has been widely circulated in recent weeks, the proposal still faces a huge hurdle in the House despite winning generally favorable reactions from industry groups. As it was introduced this week, S. 1217, the Housing Finance Reform and Taxpayer Protection Act of 2013, would create...
The revised ranking for the first quarter shows that the top retail lender, Wells Fargo, produced $60.4 billion through this channel, or 12 percent of total originations for the period.
Some non-agency participants have called for an immediate return to conforming loan limits of $417,000, which were in place in 2008 before Congress established “emergency” loan limits for high-cost areas.
“Confusion and uncertainty around representations and warranties standards continue to cause lenders to add their own overlays to the existing GSE credit standards,” said MBA vice chairman Bill Cosgrove.
Freddie filed repurchase requests on some $361.6 million of 2012 originations during the first quarter of this year, according to figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Trends.
It appears that looser underwriting has been driven by an increase in the number of lenders participating in the HARP program and copy-cat efforts that allow for LTVs of greater than 95 percent.
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