Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested in a Senate hearing that Fannie and Freddie may not have enough capital to exit conservatorship before Trump leaves office.

The FHFA has directed the GSEs to extend moratoriums on single-family foreclosures and real estate-owned evictions. The move is likely to cost the two mortgage giants between $1.1 billion and $1.7 billion.

After the 2019 increase, homebuyers with newly eligible loans had an average income twice that of buyers whose loans were still eligible under the 2018 limit.

Though both Fannie and Freddie exceed FHFA’s benchmarks for low-income refis, low-income borrowers actually accounted for a smaller share of the companies’ refis than they did for the market as a whole.

In September, the FSOC endorsed the FHFA’s capital rule, even urging the agency to use tougher, more bank-like standards. What the report didn’t say was how the council reached its conclusions.

Adolfo Marzol is one of the main architects of the final GSE capital rule.

If the FHFA wants to release the GSEs from conservatorship before President Trump leaves office, it will need a big assist from Treasury. And therein lies the problem.

Under the final rule, Fannie and Freddie will have to hold slightly more than $283 billion in capital. That’s $49 billion more than what FHFA had estimated when it re-proposed the rule in May.

The new rule provides clarity about how much and what kind of capital Fannie and Freddie will need in order to exit conservatorships. But the likelihood of that kind of capital raise seems remote.

Now that the GSE “re-IPO” is presumed to be dead, are Fannie and Freddie facing a brain drain? In short, stock options matter.