In mid-July senior White House staff, Treasury officials and the staffers from the Council of Economic Advisers met with representatives from a number of industry trade groups to discuss housing finance reform.
New mortgage insurance eligibility rules proposed earlier this month by the Federal Housing Finance Agency appear likely to cause some MIs to tweak their corporate structures and/or to raise additional capital, note industry observers. In its draft Private Mortgage Insurer Eligibility Requirements, the FHFA directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to revise, expand and align their risk management requirements for mortgage insurance counterparties.The updated financial requirements incorporate a new, risk-based framework that ensures that approved insurers have a sufficient level of liquid assets from which to pay claims.
Fannie Mae has priced its fourth and largest risk-sharing transaction to date, a more than $2 billion offering pegged to a pool of mortgages acquired last year, the GSE announced last week. The $2.05 billion note is the GSE’s third transaction under its Connecticut Avenue Securities series issued this year. Last year, the Federal Housing Finance Agency ordered both Fannie and Freddie Mac to shrink their role in the U.S. housing market. The latest offering – Series 2014-C03 – included reference loans with original loan-to-value ratios of up to 97 percent and “is consistent with prior transactions.”
Black Knight Financial Services – with a little help from its friends at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage – has repurposed some of its existing technology and combined it with some fresh capabilities to help lenders cope with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s TILA/RESPA integrated disclosure rule. It also will enable mortgage lenders to automate the numerous multi-party processes required to close a loan these days, the company said. The new ...
Industry trade groups are lining up to express their dismay at a recent audit issued by the Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which said both good and bad things about the risk nonbanks and small lenders pose to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The latest trade group missive was issued late this week by the Community Home Lenders Association: “By implication, the IG report seems to be pushing for more loans to be done at the big TBTF [too big to fail] banks by stating that small nonbank lenders are riskier for the enterprises and with little or no evidence to support the claim.”