Fannie Mae late last week notified its lenders that the GSE has modified its requirements for reporting notifications of mortgage insurance revisions, mortgage insurer-initiated cancellations and claim denials.

Freddie Mac late last week issued its own set of servicing guidelines in keeping with its mandate from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that mirror the guidelines that its fellow GSE Fannie Mae released in June.The FHFA’s Servicing Alignment Initiative, announced in late April, requires Fannie and Freddie to align their servicing requirements in four key areas: borrower contact, delinquency management practices, loan modifications and foreclosure timelines.

Freddie Nears Proposed TBW SettlementFreddie Mac and defunct mortgage servicer Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. have entered into a proposed settlement that would grant the GSE an unsecured claim of $1.022 billion that mostly represents past and future repurchase claims.The proposed settlement, filed with the Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida two weeks ago, would result in a distribution between $40 million to $45 million, which is less than the outstanding repurchase requests, according to Freddie Mac’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The former chairman and owner of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker was slammed with a 30 year prison sentence and ordered to forfeit approximately $38.5 million for his key role in orchestrating a $2.9 billion fraud scheme that led to the failure of TBW and Colonial bank and counted Freddie Mac as among its victims.

Mortgages modified by Fannie Mae slightly outperformed those modified by Freddie Mac in the short term while Freddie’s loans performed moderately better a year after modification, even as the performance of mortgages serviced by the two GSEs improved during the first three months the year, according to the first quarter Mortgage Metrics report issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision.Fannie loan mods had a 12.5 percent re-default rate three months after modification, while Freddie mods saw a 13.3 percent rate. At the six-month mark, the GSEs tied at 21.4 percent.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recorded significant declines in the volume of single-family mortgages they securitized during the second quarter of 2011, according to a new analysis and ranking based on the Inside Mortgage Finance GSE MarketScope. The two government-sponsored enterprises generated a combined $155.0 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities during the second quarter, down a hefty 40.6 percent from the first three months of the year. It was the slowest quarter in Fannie/Freddie MBS output since the final three months of 2008, the low ... [includes 3 data charts]

Fannie Mae late last week reiterated to lenders its policy on mortgage insurance coverage while it also tweaked its requirements for reporting notifications of MI rescissions, mortgage insurer-initiated cancellations and claim denials. The government-sponsored enterprise’s announcement, published June 30, reminds servicers of their “contractual obligations” to ensure that any MI coverage required by Fannie is maintained. “Mortgage insurance claims must be pursued in a way that will at all times protect Fannie Mae’s ...

Any reform proposal determining the future of the secondary mortgage market must retain, in some reduced but meaningful form, key features and principles that give all lenders equal access to the secondary mortgage market, according to industry representatives and policy advocates. Testifying before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs this week, community bankers and credit union industry representatives expressed their concern about a proposal to have some of the largest mortgage lenders replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if the government-sponsored enterprises were ...

The home purchase mortgage market remained anemic in May as many would-be homebuyers remained on the sidelines for the start of the historically stronger summer home purchase season. And to make matters worse, a combination of tough mortgage underwriting and a high level of distressed properties continued to push up cash sales. According to new numbers released by the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey, cash sales accounted for 31.3 percent of the home purchase transactions in May. That was up from 30.1 percent in April and represented the ... [includes one graph]

Housing industry groups are making a noisy push to persuade policymakers to postpone (perhaps permanently) a planned reduction in the high-cost loan limits for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA due to expire this fall. Late last week, the National Association of Home Builders released a study which concluded that an Oct. 1 reduction in the loan limits “will reduce housing demand and place downward pressure on home prices in major housing markets.” In February, the White House proposed to “shrink the government’s footprint” in housing finance and lure back ...