Mortgage industry stakeholders said Freddie Mac’s pilot program to alleviate repurchase requests is a better option than Fannie Mae’s new notice of potential defect.

Lenders will now be able to use a single verification report to validate income, employment, assets, positive rent payment and cash flow history. However, the report must have at least 12 months of data.

Guidance from on-high helped push lender buybacks of GSE loans sharply lower in the third quarter, particularly at Freddie. (Includes three data tables.)

The enterprise’s plan closely resembles an alternative to current buyback policy that was proposed by CHLA in May.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac released details on FHFA’s new policy of extending natural disaster-related reps-and-warranty relief to mortgagees impacted by the pandemic.

Fannie says material defects have been rising for the past few years. In 2Q23, seller buybacks topped $1 billion for the sixth straight quarter. (Includes three data charts.)

The 2022 book of GSE single-family business has a higher defect rate than earlier cohorts, and sellers are repurchasing loans with interest rates lower than current levels. (Includes three data charts.)

Buybacks of mortgages delivered to the GSEs declined in the fourth quarter. Still, repurchase activity was elevated for the year and the amount of unresolved repurchases didn’t budge much in the fourth quarter. (Includes three data charts.)

Seller repurchases from Fannie/Freddie MBS continued to climb in the third quarter, although the pipeline of unresolved claims declined a bit. A third-party study shows the critical-defect rate was down slightly in early 2022 as lenders grapple with a challenging market. (Includes three data charts.)

Seller buybacks were up 20.3% from the first to the second quarter, with most of them involving loans sold to the GSEs in 2021. Rocket Mortgage and loanDepot led the industry in repurchases during the first half of 2022. (Includes three data charts.)