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Inside Mortgage Finance

April 23, 2004

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Does Profit Motive Compromise Fannie’s and Freddie’s Commitment to Affordable Housing?

A top Treasury official caused a stir this week by claiming that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might be motivated to keep mortgage rates high in order to generate earnings on their hefty investment portfolios. In a speech at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Secondary Market Conference, Wayne Abernathy, assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Department of Treasury, said the two government-sponsored enterprises Read More

Freddie Bids on Emerging Interest-Only Niche; Polishes Its ARM Product Line

Freddie Mac this week announced a new product line for what appears to be the fastest-growing class of mortgages in the U.S. market: loans that allow the consumer to pay interest only during the early years of the mortgage. Read More

Freddie Starts to See Light at End of Tunnel in Terms of GSE Market Share Problems

A year ago, even before an accounting scandal engulfed the government-sponsored enterprise, Freddie Mac was quietly reeling from a series of mortgage market developments – and missteps – that had dramatically reduced its slice of the GSE business it shared with rival Fannie Mae. Read More

Gap Narrows on Key Predatory Lending Issues – but Insistence on Preemption May Scuttle Negotiations

Lenders and consumer advocates have come a long way toward the middle in the battle over predatory lending legislation. But while some observers say that as much as 90 percent of the work toward a national standard may be finished, it’s unlikely that the remaining gap will be closed any time soon. Read More

Industry Still Divided on MSR Accounting Despite FASB’s Search for Potential Relief for Servicers

The mortgage banking industry continues to be divided on whether mortgage servicing rights should be reported at their current fair value, even as the Financial Accounting Standards Board begins to look at an industry proposal for an elective, rather than a mandatory, fair value approach. Read More

New Labor Department Final Rule Addresses Overtime Status of Mortgage Loan Officers

The Department of Labor drafted a new section of its controversial rules on overtime pay designed to specifically clarify whether jobs in the financial services industries – such as mortgage loan officers – are subject to federal overtime pay requirements. Read More

New MPF Originations Fall 70% in 1Q04 as Declining Market Takes Toll on Program

Boosted by a strong, fixed-rate mortgage, refinance market, the Federal Home Loan Banks’ Mortgage Partnership Finance program saw its purchase volume jump by nearly five fold between 2001 and 2003. But the same forces that helped build up MPF volume over the past few years now appear to be bringing it down in early 2004. Specifically, plummeting refi activity and a Read More

‘Predatory Servicing’ Debate Rages as OTS Settles Charges With Major Subprime Shop

A second major subprime servicer has staved off action by a federal regulator by agreeing to make changes to its business practices. But consumer groups say the agreement doesn’t go far enough. The Office of Thrift Supervision this week announced a supervisory agreement with New Jersey-based Ocwen Federal Bank that requires the thrift to change key aspects of its servicing strategy, eliminate or Read More

Technology Helps Standardize Data Formats, Speeds Up Decisioning, Due Diligence and Doc Delivery

Lenders, servicers and secondary-market investors will be able to cut the time to move documents to one another from six months to two weeks with the new data standards being developed for the mortgage industry, according to technology experts. Read More

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