Total issuance of agency single-family MBS rose a scant 0.6 percent from March to April, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking. All of the increase came from Ginnie Mae issuance, which rose 16.1 percent from March, hitting $36.30 billion in April. Things were different for the two government-sponsored enterprises: Fannie Mae saw a 3.4 percent decline from the previous month and Freddie Mac volume was down 13.0 percent. Ginnie fared...[Includes two data tables]
Officials at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their regulator are encouraged by – but by no means satisfied with – the progress made by the government-sponsored enterprises and their customers at expanding the credit box. “We do see an expansion of credit, steady growth in the 97 percent [loan to value ratio] programs and a little better distribution of credit scores,” said Bob Ryan, special advisor and acting deputy director at the Federal Housing Finance Agency during remarks at the secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association in New York this week. “But they are still skewed to the higher end more than in the past.” Fannie and Freddie are trying...
Fannie Mae late last month loosened its underwriting guidelines for borrowers with student loan and other types of debt, and is currently working on pilot programs aimed at helping consumers amass a downpayment. In an interview with Inside MBS & ABS this week, Fannie Vice President of Product Development and Affordable Housing Jonathan Lawless said the government-sponsored enterprise has “more to come” on loosening guidelines. Although he could not provide much in the way of detail, he said...
In response to a question about Fannie's capital buffer, Mayopoulos said, “It’s our mission to provide liquidity in all markets at all times and we’re continuing to do that. I am glad to see that policy makers are starting to refocus on housing market reform including the lack of capital at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
The House Financial Services Committee this week approved legislation that would allow the White House to fire the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency at will and allow Congress to set the agency’s annual budget. Those provisions are included in the CHOICE Act, a Republican bill that would make sweeping changes to the Dodd-Frank Act. While the legislation is expected eventually to be cleared by the full House on a partisan vote, its fate in the Senate is murkier. FHFA Director Mel Watt’s term as chief regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ends...
The FHFA was created in part because its predecessor, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, was widely seen as lacking enough independence to adequately oversee the GSEs...
One of the objectives in resolving the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be minimizing the risk of market disruption in transitioning to the replacement system, according to industry executives. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest proposal for fixing the two government-sponsored enterprises is largely predicated on recent developments in the GSE world, including the first stage of the common securitization platform, extensive product standardization between the two, and the rapid acceptance of credit-risk transfer structures. Those are...
Six months ago, New Residential Mortgage didn’t own any mortgage servicing rights, though it was active in the market as a buyer of excess servicing and in other forms. It ended March 2017 as the sixth-largest servicer in the industry, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking, and that is probably some kind of record. New Residential reported owned MSR on $252.0 billion of mostly Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pools at the end of the first quarter. During the first three months of the year, it acquired $92.5 billion of servicing from CitiMortgage and smaller chunks from United Shore, Residential Credit Solutions and Walter/Ditech. Its reported first-quarter total appears to include a $67.0 billion buy from PHH Mortgage that has not yet closed. In addition, New Residential held...[Includes two data tables]
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