Over the past few weeks, speculators have been driving up the price of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac common stock and “trust” preferred shares in the hope of a payoff somewhere down the line. But according to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance, the only payoff might come if they can find someone else willing to pay more than they did for stock that is considered virtually worthless. Industry lobbyists, former government-sponsored enterprise executives and some investors say...

Why is the share price of Fannie Mae's junior preferred stock rising so much? Also, send Freddie Mac "back to the future"?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are continuing to shrink their retained portfolios as mandated by their regulator.

Income tied to residential servicing was down 27.7 percent for the 10 lenders as a group.

Although 2013 will turn out to be a decent year in terms of residential production, next year could be quite ugly.

Ginnie Mae officials have moved beyond whether they should consolidate the agency’s two MBS programs to how they should do it, but it remains much less certain that similar proposals to restructure the Fannie/Freddie market will take root. The newer Ginnie II MBS program has become significantly more popular than the original Ginnie I security, both in terms of new issuance and the outstanding supply of securities. Speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association secondary market conference in New York this week, Ginnie President Ted Tozer said...

There appeared to be considerable enthusiasm at the Mortgage Bankers Association secondary market conference this week about the highly anticipated risk-sharing experiments by the government-sponsored enterprises – and some lobbying about the most suitable structures and participants. The first transaction is likely to be a senior-subordinate structure and be issued as a credit-linked note, rather than a conventional cash securitization, said Richard King, chief executive officer of Invesco Mortgage Capital. He said the deal will likely be syndicated...

The retained mortgage portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to decline through natural attrition during the first quarter of 2013, falling by 4.9 percent from the previous quarter, according to an Inside MBS & ABS analysis of earnings reports released by the two government-sponsored enterprises this week. Fannie and Freddie held $1.13 trillion in mortgage assets as of the end of March. With heavy refinance activity, the rate of decline in early 2013 was faster than it had been; GSE holdings were down 13.6 percent from year-ago levels. There was...[Included one data chart]

Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s multifamily businesses hold “little inherent value” and would be less viable absent the government guarantees the two government-sponsored enterprises currently enjoy, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In a new report, the agency also noted that the sale of the GSEs’ multifamily businesses would yield “little or no value” to the U.S. Treasury or to taxpayers, while at the same time it could be a huge disruption to the commercial real estate markets. “The new ‘stand-alone’ businesses would primarily depend...

The first GSE risk sharing transaction is likely to be a senior-subordinate structure and be issued as a credit-linked note.