Public finance

The Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act last week achieved a milestone by garnering bipartisan cosponsorship by more than half of the 435 members of the House.

Ginnie Mae in 2020 is going to seriously examine what it would take to respond to a longstanding, priority request of its issuers.

The Trump administration proposes cutting personnel and other budgetary items at the bureau, while the agency’s director — who controls the purse strings and was hand-picked by the administration — aims to boost spending and hire more employees.

The Community Preservation Corp. says its inaugural sustainability offering is the single largest bond sale by a community development financial institution.

The administration proposed to end the housing trust funds now financed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and to subject numerous agencies to the congressional appropriations process, among other things.

A city agency that in recent years lost its luster as a place where low-income New Orleanians could go for low-interest mortgages is set to re-emerge as a key player in plans to develop more affordable housing in the city.

State officials are set to grant a private-equity firm building a passenger train to Las Vegas the ability to issue tax-exempt bonds, while requests for using the funding for affordable housing go by the wayside.

A development partnership is positioned to start building a low-income housing tower in Pawaa later this year following a recent tentative endorsement by the state of Hawaii to finance the $89 million project.

The deal, issued through the California Housing Finance Agency, is the first multifamily tax-exempt deal to qualify for the GSE's Green Rewards program.

Next week's $500 million taxable revenue bond deal is backed by a 1% surcharge on annual incomes higher than $1 million.

The housing bond measure, the largest of its kind in San Francisco's history, comes as the ballooning wage inequality has sent the city's homeless population skyrocketing 17% over the last two years.

If the bonds are approved in March, the junk-rated city plans to issue $250 million of new money, unlimited tax general obligation bonds in 2020.

The monthly volume of new mortgage securities insured by Ginnie Mae remained higher than it has been in more than two years in July, rising slightly on a consecutive-month basis.

The more than $44 billion in new Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities that came to market in June marked the strongest month for the government bond insurer in more than two years.

Austin's record-breaking $250 million affordable housing bond appeared to be on its way to approval late Tuesday.

Under the Federal Housing Finance Agency's plan, small Home Loan banks would face a new housing benchmark and a volume threshold for meeting the goals would be eliminated.

The District of Columbia Housing Finance Agency priced $74.5 million of tax-exempt bonds.

Thirty states told the Council of Development Finance Agencies they issued mortgage revenue bonds in 2017 compared to only 18 that issued mortgage credit certificates.

Kathy Kraninger has been tight-lipped about her plans for the consumer bureau, but some point to signs that she could curb the agency's power by reducing staff and other costs.

New securitizations backed by reverse mortgages are now at a low not seen in two years, signaling that higher volumes seen in recent months may be tapering off.