Fannie Tightening Underwriting Standards

Fannie Mae has announced that, effective Jan. 30, borrowers must be qualified at "a fully-indexed rate that assumes a fully-amortizing repayment schedule" in order to qualify a loan for purchase by the government-sponsored enterprise.The GSE is also eliminating its "InterestFirst" interest-only loan product category and reclassifying it as a loan "feature" to be used with other mortgage products. In addition, Fannie will be permitting temporary buydowns for fixed-rate mortgage loans with an IO feature and making other changes to its IO underwriting. Fannie Mae can be found on the Web at http://www.fanniemae.com.