Fannie Mae

There's been chatter that investors are shying away from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities because Congress may not enact housing finance reform. Be skeptical of those claims.

With economic expansion expected to keep churning through at least the first half of next year, Fannie Mae upwardly revised its single-family mortgage origination outlook for 2019 and 2020.

Lenders have bundled more than $18 billion worth of non-QM, private-label loans into bonds this year that they then sold to investors, a 44% increase from 2018 and the most for any year since the securities became common post-crisis.

The Federal Housing Financial Agency's latest report on credit risk transfers shows Fannie Mae continues to slowly improve a multifamily mortgage risk-sharing metric that lags Freddie Mac's by a wide margin.

And the government-sponsored enterprises could hold initial public offerings in 2021 or 2022 to ensure they hold adequate capital, FHFA Director Mark Calabria said.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s exemption from the Qualified Mortgage rule is on borrowed time, but a House bill would allow lenders to use the mortgage giants’ guidelines for documenting borrower income.

Though still comparatively strong, consumer confidence in the housing market dropped again in October in response to economic uncertainty and lack of affordability, according to Fannie Mae.

The Supreme Court is ready to weigh in on the CFPB’s leadership structure, but both agencies are facing similar constitutional challenges, suggesting a broader impact of any decision.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is seeking comment on a proposal that could pave the way for potential Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac competitors to use the uniform mortgage-backed security structure.

Freddie Mac is now forecasting back-to-back years of $2 trillion in mortgage loan originations rather than a drop-off in 2020.

A risk management model revision that decreased single-family loan-loss allowances and a strong mortgage lending environment contributed to consistent earnings results at Fannie Mae in the third quarter.

Recent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac activities are “not the kind of day-to-day behavior that you would expect from companies” under federal control, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency said.

A lower court “erred” when it sided with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s investors, the Justice Department said in its petition to the high court.

Home lenders will benefit from elevated refinance activity through the first half of next year, but volume may then fall off quickly, according the Mortgage Bankers Association's latest forecast.

VantageScore totaled 12.3 billion scores across consumer credit loan categories over a 12-month period between 2018 and 2019 with minimal mortgage volume, leaving potential for a major ramp up.

There are many ways to mark the economic progress since the Great Recession: over 100 months of job gains, record low unemployment and a long bull run on Wall Street.

When it comes to possible new competitors in the secondary market, the heads of the two current outlets more than welcomed the possibility of additional players in their space because of housing finance reform.

The regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac discussed steps the companies have already taken to limit their risk, as well as efforts to prevent housing market “overlap” with the FHA.

The government-sponsored enterprises are moving ahead with a new mortgage application that omits a previously planned language question, but are looking to serve limited English proficiency borrowers in another way.

BSI Financial's chief executive weighs in on changes in the interest rate environment, the evolution of digital mortgage servicing and natural disasters.