A nearly decade-long class-action fraud lawsuit on behalf of Fannie Mae investors and the GSE’s accountant KPMG LLP has been put to rest following the approval of a federal court judge earlier this month. In papers filed with the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, Judge Richard Leon said he found the $153 million settlement and plan for distributing it among the more than one million class members was “fair, reasonable and adequate.” Two Ohio pension funds – the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio – filed suit in 2004 related to a $6.3 billion overstatement of earnings against Fannie and three former GSE executives, including then-CEO Franklin Raines.

PNC Financial Services will pay Freddie Mac $89 million to put to bed all buyback liabilities on home loans sold to the GSE in the years leading up to the mortgage-market meltdown, the lender announced earlier this month. The settlement resolves certain PNC repurchase obligations for both existing and future claims for approximately 900,000 loans that were sold to Freddie between 2000 and 2008. The $89 million payout, less credits of $8 million, will also be used to compensate Freddie for any losses that the GSE incurred in the past or any other losses that may result in the future, said PNC.

In between the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s announcement of a new guaranty fee increase and the Senate’s confirmation of a new FHFA director, a Manhattan federal judge last week quietly issued a ruling that permits the agency to proceed with its residential mortgage-backed securites lawsuits. In the summer of 2011, the FHFA filed suit against 18 big banks in connection with flawed mortgage securities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased between 2005 and 2007. A number of defendants in the case, including a host of individuals, argued in an appeal filed in August that due to a 2005 change in Rule 430B of the Securities Act of 1933, they should not be held liable in the case.

Fannie Mae last week issued an update to its lenders describing the new process that the GSE has implemented to identify and monitor individual appraisers. According to Lender Letter LL-2013-10, Fannie reviews appraisal reports for patterns of discrepancies and inconsistencies. Using the appraisal data that it collects through the Uniform Collateral Data Portal, Fannie said it has developed a process that identifies appraisers whose work displays more egregious issues.

Fannie, Freddie Suspend Holiday Evictions. In what has become an annual tradition, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each announced last week that all foreclosure-related evictions of single-family and two-to-four unit properties are suspended until after the New Year.“At this time of year, we want to bring some relief to families who confronted financial difficulties and went through foreclosure,” said Chris Bowden, Freddie’s senior vice president of REO. The GSEs are also encouraging struggling homeowners to contact their servicers for help to avoid foreclosure. “We encourage any homeowner who is having difficulty making their mortgage payment to reach out for help right away,” added Fannie Chief Operating Officer Terry Edwards.

The government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are stepping up their development of a standardized dataset to support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recently finalized consolidated closure disclosure forms – a project that could represent a tipping point in the mortgage industry’s use of electronic mortgages, technology vendor representatives say. The GSEs’ common industry dataset that supports the CFPB’s form is called the Uniform Closing Dataset, and is one component of ...

Limited examination resources and staff turnover at the Federal Housing Finance Agency remain a concern, according to the FHFA's Office of Inspector General.

Home-equity lending has quietly begun to rebound in 2013 as firmer house prices give homeowners more to borrow against and rising mortgage rates diminish the appeal of refinancing. According to revised Inside Mortgage Finance estimates, a total of $43.5 billion of home-equity lines of credit and closed-end second mortgages were originated during the first nine months of this year. That was up 30.8 percent from the same period in 2012 and it included a hefty 13.3 percent increase from the second to the third quarter of this year. The increase in HEL production so far hasn’t turned...[Includes three data charts]

The U.S. Treasury’s new Federal Insurance Office released a long-awaited report last week that calls for the federal oversight of mortgage insurers, an industry now overseen directly by state insurance regulators and indirectly by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. “Federal standards and oversight for mortgage insurers should be developed and implemented,” said the report. The private mortgage insurance sector is interconnected...

After ending fiscal year 2012 at a negative $16.3 billion, the FHA’s mutual mortgage insurance fund is close to being in the black, according to an independent actuarial report released late last week. The FHA noted that it has shifted its focus from shoring up the MMIF to reducing lenders’ underwriting overlays and targeting poorly performing servicers. The net worth of the MMIF at the end of fiscal year 2013 was negative $1.3 billion, according to the report, due to pricing and policy changes by the Department of Housing and Urban Development along with improvements to the economy. The capital reserve ratio for the MMIF also improved from negative 1.44 percent at the end of fiscal 2012 to negative 0.11 percent at the end of fiscal 2013. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan noted...