Nearly half of all mortgage borrowers did not refinance their home loan during the period between 2009 and 2012, when mortgage interest rates declined steadily, according to a Fannie Mae survey. The government-sponsored enterprise found that 40 percent to 50 percent of borrowers, for some reason, did not take advantage of low interest rates to reduce their monthly mortgage payments through refinancing. To try to get at why borrowers dont refinance when the opportunity seems ripe, Fannie economist ...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have both rolled out limited-time offer incentive programs for real estate agents and homebuyers in a bid to move some of the GSEs real estate-owned properties.Freddie announced this week it will pay a $1,000 inducement to selling agents and a separate $500 bonus to listing agents when they sell a home through the companys HomeSteps program.
Fed: G-Fee Hikes Would Have Minimal Impact on Agency Originations. Increases to guaranty fees under consideration by the Federal Housing Finance Agency would directly reduce the dollar volume of new agency originations by less than 1.0 percent, according to new research published by the Federal Reserve. In December, then-FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco announced a plan to increase the base g-fee for all new Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages by 10 basis points, update the up-front g-fee grid and eliminate the upfront 25 basis point adverse market fee that has been assessed on all mortgages purchased by Fannie and Freddie since 2008.
Last years steady decline in GSE refinance activity continued into 2014 and contributed to an overall dip in the volume of single-family mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. Fannie and Freddie issued $47.0 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities in January, a 15.8 percent decline from December 2013 and a steeper 61.9 percent decrease from the same period a year ago.
The SEC was poised to issue a final rule with loan-level disclosure requirements for non-agency MBS earlier this month. The SFIG said it expects the SEC will issue a final rule on the so-called Regulation AB2 in the near future.
Lenders are more cautious in the post-subprime era and they no longer practice risk layering on loans to borrowers with less-than-stellar credit histories as they did in the past.
Private mortgage insurers provided primary coverage on $41.59 billion of mortgages originated during the fourth quarter of 2013, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. While that was down 29.6 percent from the third quarter, it also represented the deepest private MI penetration of new originations in five years. Private MI coverage including existing insurance transferred to new loans originated under the Home Affordable Refinance Program accounted for 13.6 percent of new mortgages produced in the fourth quarter. That was the highest private MI share of new originations since the first quarter of 2008, when it was 14.7 percent. HARP continued...[Includes three data charts]