Ginnie Mae would become the linchpin of the conventional secondary mortgage market of the future, providing an explicit government guarantee for MBS issued by one of several new entities, under a plan being drafted by Senate Republicans.
The National Association of Realtors this week asked the regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lower the MBS guarantee fees charged by the two government-sponsored enterprises, citing lower corporate tax rates ushered in under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Freddie Mac is offering a new cash benefit to sellers of loans that fall in a narrow band of loan sizes that typically are used for specified MBS pools. The new category targeted for cash deliveries are 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with loan amounts ranging from $175,000 to $200,000.
Bill Maloni, a retired Fannie executive who’s been tracking the reform debate for years, believes the Corker bill, if enacted as is, eventually will place the secondary market in the hands of the megabanks.
Calabria is a former director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank that would like to do away Fannie and Freddie…
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs this week that he’s committed to housing-finance reform, wants to maintain the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and get more private capital back into the housing market.