Fewer than 100 financial institutions could be adversely affected by a proposed Federal Housing Finance Agency rule to tweak membership criteria for the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks, the agency’s head told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee last week. In his first oversight hearing appearance since assuming office in January, FHFA Director Mel Watt said the agency’s “preliminary review” has found of the 7,500 FHLBank member institutions less than 100 may potentially be negatively impacted.

As the Federal Housing Finance Agency prepares a new guaranty fee framework to unveil in early 2015, a report issued by the FHFA last week noted that big g-fee increases in 2013 were not spread evenly across the market. According to the FHFA’s sixth annual study, average mortgage-backed security g-fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac jumped from 36 basis points in 2012 to 51 bps last year.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week unveiled a policy alteration that would potentially allow a foreclosed homeowner to purchase a home – including one he/she lost due to arrears – from the real estate owned inventory of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The change will permit Fannie and Freddie to sell existing REO properties to any qualified purchaser at the property’s fair-market value, as determined by the GSE, according to the FHFA.

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at the direction of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, last week rolled out changes to their selling representation-and-warranty frameworks in an effort to reduce lenders’ concerns about when they might be asked to repurchase a loan. The GSEs noted that some lenders were concerned about repurchase risk and other market factors causing an increase in credit overlays, which has limited access to credit for potential creditworthy borrowers.

The case against the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s chief operating officer ended last week after a Washington, DC, Superior Court judge found Richard Hornsby not guilty of making violent threats against former FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco.Judge Juliet McKenna acquitted Hornsby of two misdemeanor charges of attempted threats to do bodily harm to DeMarco.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are testing parts of the new common securitization platform and are expected to have the system largely built in 2015. But the GSEs have a lot of work to do building interfaces for their systems to work with the new platform while the joint venture that’s running the CSP won’t be functional for several years, according to two recent Federal Housing Finance Agency reports.

Fannie, Freddie Conforming Loan Limits Mostly Unchanged for 2015. The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week said that conforming loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2015 would remain at current levels in most markets. For much of the country, the conforming loan limit for one-unit properties will remain at $417,000. The loan limits are established under the terms of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and are calculated each year.

The Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization recently released version 3.3.1 of its residential reference model for public comment. This version of the standard includes data points and structures related to a number of recent regulatory and reporting requirements and additions in the areas of mortgage insurance coverage and conditions, title, payoff and property valuation. “Version 3.3.1 of the MISMO Reference Model and Logical Data Dictionary are the direct result of MISMO contributors from across the industry collaborating to solve business problems and develop the standards needed to meet industry needs in today’s rapidly changing regulatory and compliance environment,” said Mike Fratantoni, president of MISMO and chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. In addition to the LDD, XML schema and ...

Understanding the ebb and flow of mortgage debt is hampered by a lack of data on mortgage flows, making it more difficult for policymakers and regulators to deal with fluctuations in overall credit growth. A working paper published recently by the Federal Reserve attempts to make sense of the factors driving the volatility in the stock debt by analyzing changes in aggregate mortgage debt into mortgage inflows and outflows. It attributes these inflows and outflows to more micro-components such as investor activity, first-time homebuying and borrower credit score. “Quantifying these various flows into and out of the pool of mortgage debt allows for a precise assessment of the relative importance over time,” the paper noted. “Creating such data on an ...

Nonbank mortgage servicers are bracing for an onslaught of new capital recommendations from the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, which could see the light of day in early 2015. But the industry did receive one piece of good news: although the CSBS is working on what it calls “options for prudential standards,” the organization will not be addressing capital for nonbank originators, a CSBS official told Inside Mortgage Finance. The group is...