Freddie Announces New Alliance with Lenders One. Freddie Mac has teamed up with Lenders One Mortgage Cooperative, based in St. Louis, to give Lenders One members who are Freddie seller/servicers pricing and execution benefits, enhanced access to mortgage products, and professional training and development opportunities. Freddie did not provide additional details on specific pricing benefits .Chris Boyle, senior vice president of single-family sales and relationship management at Freddie, said Freddie Mac is pleased to “help its members reach more eligible borrowers, achieve new efficiencies in the origination process and build strong, competitive businesses.” In related news, Lenders One is still...

The mortgage industry has notched one modest victory on Capitol Hill and continues to hope for more as lawmakers try to wrap up a spending bill for the government’s 2016 fiscal year. The victory is a new process for banks and others to petition the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to designate an area as “rural” or underserved for the purposes of the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule. More flexible mortgage products, such as balloon loans, are permitted in such markets. The change was included...

The Federal Home Loan Bank system introduced a new servicing-released option from Nationstar Mortgage as part of its Mortgage Partnership Finance program. The program lets member lenders sell their fixed-rate government loans into the secondary market. and the new option is expected to be ready sometime in December. The MPF government mortgage-backed security product already had a servicing-retained option, in which the lenders service their own loans, but with the new product, FHLB bank members can use the full service options without the infrastructure or expertise needed to service the loans. John Stocchetti, executive vice president of the MPF program, which operates out of the Chicago FHLBank, said the new option is another step in the FHLBank system becoming a “one-stop shop” for its members.

The Federal Home Loan Banks reported a modest decline in outstanding advances during the third quarter, but the complexion of the system’s customers continued to shift, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis of bank call reports and Office of Finance disclosures. Total advances outstanding declined just 0.2 percent from the end of the second quarter, but commercial bank usage was down 8.2 percent. Banks were still the biggest borrowers of FHLBank advances, with a 58.9 percent share of the total $586.2 billion (par value) of advances outstanding at the end of September. Meanwhile, advances to insurance companies surged a whopping 14.6 percent during the third quarter, replacing thrifts as the second-largest class of FHLBank advance users.

The Federal Home Loan Bank System is seeking to boost its share of government-backed lending and the Ginnie Mae market with a new servicing-release option for FHA, VA and rural housing mortgages that are sold into the Mortgage Partnership Finance program. The new feature adds to an existing servicing-retained execution in the MPF Government Mortgage-Backed Securities program. The current servicing-retained component requires participating lenders to service loans they originate and sell into the MPF conduit. The servicing-release option from Nationstar Mortgage, a top-10 mortgage servicer based in Dallas, will provide lenders with greater pricing flexibility so they can become more competitive in the communities they serve, said Matt Feldman, president of the Chicago FHLB. Only FHLBank members that are participants in MPF can use the government MBS program. In order to ...

The Federal Home Loan Banks appear to be eyeing a bigger share of the government-backed lending market with the announcement of a new servicing-release option for FHA, VA and rural housing loans sold into the Mortgage Partnership Finance program. The addition of a servicing-released option from Nationstar Mortgage, a top-10 mortgage servicer, to an already existing servicing-retained execution will give participating lenders greater flexibility in pricing and selling government-backed mortgages they have originated into the secondary market, said Matt Feldman, president of the Chicago FHLB. Previously, program participants were required...

The Federal Home Loan Bank system earned $484 million in the third quarter of 2015 and attributes the 23 percent year-over-year decrease to net losses on derivatives and hedging activities. But total net income for the first nine months of the year saw a 29 percent jump, to $2.18 billion, according to figures compiled by the system’s Office of Finance. This was driven by higher litigation settlements and net gains on derivatives and hedging activities. After falling flat last quarter, total FHLB assets from the end of June were up at the end of the third quarter by less than 1 percent to $919.6 billion.

FCI Lender Services, the nation’s largest private-money servicer, is sticking its toe in the lending market by teaming up with Blackrock Mortgage Investment to extend credit to investors in single-family rental properties. This month, the Anaheim, CA-based FCI rolled out two SFR products and one tied to investors looking to buy nonperforming mortgages. According to a rate sheet provided to Inside Mortgage Trends, one of the SFR products requires...

There is widespread agreement that any substantive legislative remedy for the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won’t begin to happen until after the 2016 elections – if then – but lawmakers on Capitol Hill may manage to push through some minor adjustments in this Congress. The most likely legislation to pass would have an impact on just two individuals, the CEOs of Fannie and Freddie, who received sizable pay hikes early this year. In the Senate, S. 2036, the Equity in Government Compensation Act of 2015 would require the Federal Housing Finance Agency to suspend those compensation packages and roll them back to $600,000, their previous level. The bill was co-sponsored...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is toying with the idea of “grandfathering” the membership of captive insurance affiliates in the Federal Home Loan Bank system, while blocking out others, according to industry observers tracking the matter. Such a final rule would benefit MBS-investing real estate investment trusts that gained entry through a captive. A few years back, several REITs found a loophole in the FHLBank membership rules and exploited it before the FHFA put a moratorium on new captives joining the system. The moratorium expired...