A bill introduced in the Senate last week with some bipartisan support would allow real estate investment trusts to regain access to funding from Federal Home Loan Banks. The bill would overturn a 2016 rule from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that restricted captive insurance companies from being FHLBank members. Before the FHFA rule took effect, a number of REITs established captive insurers to gain access to FHLBank advances, which come with better terms than ...
The Federal Home Loan Banks may be required to jointly establish at least one entity to aggregate conventional mortgages and use a new government program to issue guaranteed MBS under draft legislation from Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN.
President Trump this week signed a short-term spending bill that would keep the government operating until Feb. 8, 2018. The bill ended a three-day shutdown after the previous spending authority for most of the government expired at midnight on Jan. 19. However, the threat of another shutdown looms. FHA and Ginnie Mae both had contingency plans in place in case the short-lived shutdown dragged on, as it had in 2013. That event lasted for 16 days, at a loss of $1.6 billion a day to the federal government. Under FHA’s emergency plan, the agency would continue to endorse new single-family forward mortgages, but not Home Equity Conversion Mortgages and Title I loans. Ginnie would reduce staffing to essential personnel but continue its secondary market operations. It would continue to remit timely payment of principal and interest to investors, grant commitment authority and support issuance of ...
The total book value of the Federal Home Loan Banks’ eligible collateral was up 21 percent in 2016, rising to $2.8 trillion from $2.3 trillion, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recently released report to Congress highlighting the amounts and types of collateral pledged to the FHLBanks.Advances over the same period rose by 11 percent from $634 million to $705 million. Reported borrowing capacity was $2.1 trillion. Single-family and multifamily residential loans accounted for the majority of the book value of collateral, both eligible (61 percent) and pledged (58 percent).
Fannie Affordable Housing Challenge. Fannie Mae launched a $10 million challenge to help address the affordable housing crisis. Through the Sustainable Communities Innovation Challenge, the GSE will commit $10 million over two years to attract promising ideas that will help alleviate affordable housing issues. Fannie expects to receive proposals from across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Maria Evans, Fannie’s vice president of sustainable communities’ partnership and innovation, said, “With the Challenge, we are looking for new concepts, designs, and ways of solving our nation’s affordable housing issues from innovators who are working inside and outside of the traditional housing industry. Great ideas can come from anywhere.” The goal is to...
The Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle lost an appeal in an MBS case against Barclays Capital this week in which it claimed the investment banker made false statements or left out certain facts about the securities it sold in 2008. But the Court of Appeals of Washington State ruled that theFHLBank was fully aware of what it was buying at the time.
Banks and thrifts reported holding $575.4 billion of Federal Home Loan Bank advances at the end of September, a quarterly increase of 1.7 percent and the largest volume of advances in the past 12 months, according to an analysis by Inside The GSEs. That number is also well above the number of advances that were made in the third quarter of 2016. Year-over-year, third quarter advances were 6.2 percent higher than the $541.8 billion reported a year earlier. While JPMorgan Chase remains in the number one spot with $63.8 billion in advances, that was down 6.9 percent from $68.5 in the second quarter, and 19.8 percent below the level a year ago.
Consumer advocates are pushing for changes that could impact the non-agency market, including raising concerns about the use of Federal Home Loan Bank advances and calling for revisions to standards for qualified mortgages. In a letter this month to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a group of 136 consumer advocates were critical of Starwood Property Trust’s recently disclosed use of FHLBank advances to fund acquisitions of non-QMs. Starwood is a real estate investment ...
The Federal Home Loan Bank System saw a 4.5 percent year-over-year increase in advances during the third quarter of 2017. The FHLBank’s Office of Finance reported that advances stood at $719.4 billion, up from the $688.6 billion a year ago and the $706.8 billion reported at the end of August. The combined net income for the third quarter was $854 million, up from $844 million the previous quarter but down 1 percent when compared to the same period in 2016. The OF attributes that to lower gains on litigation settlements offset by an increase in net interest income.
The Federal Home Loan Banks have grown over the past few years with their total assets surpassing pre-crisis levels, according to a new Federal Reserve report analyzing recent trends and the increased role of the FHLBank system. The Fed noted that the growth coincided with two government policies: the imposition of the Liquidity Coverage Ratio in 2015 and the reform of money market funds a year later. Large banking institutions now have an incentive to borrow more from FHLBanks and less from private short-term money markets thanks to the preferential treatment in the LCR. Also, while FHLBank use of short-term funding has seen an uptick for several years, the report noted...