Housing finance reform

Shifting policy stances and a renewed focus on housing finance reform from the White House could make 2018 a breakout year for Congress to finally resolve the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The announcement Thursday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt agreed to let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each build a $3 billion capital buffer avoided a potential crisis.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be allowed to build capital buffers to protect against losses under an agreement between the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced on Thursday.

For decades, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped working-class Americans get mortgages. That essential and powerful role in the national economy is fading.

The government-sponsored enterprises are at the heart of our housing finance problems, not the solutions.

The House Financial Services Committee passed 13 bills (and scrapped a vote on one) Wednesday, including one that would stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from being released by the government and another hailed as helping the underbanked in rural areas.

Until recently, there was a consensus among policymakers that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed to be eliminated. That just changed. Here's why.

House Financial Services Committee Jeb Hensarling shifted tactics on housing finance reform Wednesday, acknowledging that a bill he’s pushed for years to virtually eliminate the government’s role in the mortgage market lacks the support to become law.

Testing of the common securitization platform is taking longer than expected, but the Federal Housing Finance Agency said it won't delay the 2019 launch of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's new single "uniform mortgage-backed security."

The financial services industry has cheered a proposed reduction in the corporate tax rate, but a lower rate could force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to write down assets, increasing the odds that the companies will need Treasury support.