The Obama administration’s top housing official took a beating from Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee during a hearing this week over recent changes to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Distressed Asset Sales Program, also known as DASP. For more than two hours, HUD Secretary Julian Castro faced a relentless attack by Republicans angered by what they perceived as preferential treatment given to nonprofits and local government over private investors in the DASP bidding process. The federal program sells pools of severely delinquent FHA mortgages to investors to help distressed borrowers stay in their homes and, at the same time, minimize losses to the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. Most of the nonperforming loans in the DASP pools are...
One mortgage insurance lobbyist added: “Fannie and Freddie really don’t want to cut fees. It would hurt their earnings. It’s hard to imagine them doing anything right now that would reduce revenues.”
Mortgage lenders delivered big increases in purchase mortgages and refinance loans to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. The agencies securitized $100.05 billion of purchase mortgages and $118.24 billion of refinance loans during the second quarter, up 37.3 percent and 31.1 percent, respectively, from the first three months of the year. That brought total agency issuance of single-family MBS to $612.38 billion for the first six months of 2016, putting the market on target to match last year’s $1.261 trillion in production. Although second-quarter volume was a strong rebound from the first quarter, momentum seemed...[Includes two data tables]
Recently, rumors were making the rounds in Washington that Fannie and Freddie might be pondering an increase in their net worth minimums for seller/servicers...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw significant increases in the flow of both refinance loans and purchase-money mortgages during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. And for the first time in a long while, nonbank mortgage companies delivered over half of the single-family mortgages securitized by the two government-sponsored enterprises. Fannie and Freddie securitized...[Includes three data tables]
Some lenders are generating extra revenue by providing a valuable service to real estate agents: providing leads on potential homebuyers. Real estate agents report mixed feelings about the services offered by Quicken Loans and others, according to a recent survey conducted by Campbell Surveys and sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance. Interactions between lenders and real estate agents typically relate to homebuyer referrals by agents to lenders. However, some lenders also sell homebuyer leads to real estate agents. “There is...