Inside Mortgage Finance

Fannie Mae Regains Some GSE Market Share in 2006 Despite Mixed Business With Top Lender Customers

Despite significant corporate turmoil and an historic regulatory settlement, Fannie Mae has quietly begun to win back some of the share of the government-sponsored enterprise market that it had lost to rival Freddie Mac in 2005. According to the Inside Mortgage Finance MBS Database, Fannie Mae issued a total of $229.4 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the first half of this year. That total, which includes only pass-through pools, was up 8.8 percent from… [Three data tables included] Read More

Nonprime Lending Keeps the Mortgage Market Afloat In Early 2006 – But How Long Can the Party Last?

The nonprime sector provided a lot of the muscle for the mortgage market in the early part of 2006, but there are signs that the sector may be feeling some strain. Inside Mortgage Finance estimates that $237 billion in new subprime and Alternative A loans were originated during the first quarter of 2006. That meant nonprime loans accounted for a huge 34.9 percent of the total $680 billion in total first-quarter mortgage originations. … [One data table included] Read More

FHA Credit Watch Great at Finding – Lousy at Terminating – Bad FHA Lenders, Watchdog Finds

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is rejecting a watchdog’s call for administrative action against lenders that delivered loans to the agency’s flagship single-family insurance program – after they have been terminated by its Credit Watch compliance monitoring program. Launched in 1999, the Credit Watch program allows HUD to terminate the approval agreement of lenders whose default and claim rates for loans endorsed within the preceding 24 months exceeds the regional and national… Read More

Feds Aim to Crack Down on Mortgage Fraud As Suspicious Reports Increase Dramatically

Mortgage fraud continues to be one of the fastest growing white-collar crimes in the United States, with preliminary federal figures indicating a near-thousand-fold increase in the last decade. According to preliminary findings from FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, suspicious activity reports related to mortgage fraud filed by banks and thrifts totaled 25,931 in 2005, an increase of about 41 percent from the previous year. Mortgage-related SAR reports numbered just 4,696 back in 2001. … Read More

HUD Questioning Some of Freddie’s Mortgage Purchases for 2005 Affordable Housing Goals

Freddie Mac says it met all its affordable housing goals and its home-purchase subgoals for 2005, but the government-sponsored enterprise recently acknowledged that it hasn’t fully convinced the Department of Housing of Urban Development. “We are engaged in ongoing discussions with HUD regarding interpretive issues relating to the purchase and counting of mortgages for purposes of housing goals performance for 2005,” Freddie says in the new information supplement released with its recent annual report.… Read More