Watt said in a statement in July that the purpose of the pay raises was to "promote CEO retention, allow reliable succession planning, and ensure the continuity, efficiency and stability" at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Watt's predecessor, Ed DeMarco, capped the GSE CEO pay at $600,000 a year more than three years ago after four years of conservatorship.
Read More »Civil Rights Groups Urge Administration to Recapitalize GSEs and End Conservatorships
The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) sent a letter to President Obama, calling on the Administration to end the conservatorships and recapitalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Read More »Freddie Mac’s Mortgage Portfolio Sees Eighth Straight Month of Expansion
With that expansion of the total mortgage portfolio came a drop of four basis points in the serious delinquency rate for loans backed by Freddie Mac, down to 1.41 percent—a year-over-year decline of more than half a percentage point, from 1.96 percent in September 2014.
Read More »Success of GSEs’ Credit Risk Transfer Programs Ensure They Are Here to Stay
But the success of programs like the Connecticut Avenue Securities (CAS) Series by Fannie Mae and Structured Agency Credit Risk (STACR) debt note offerings by Freddie Mac have ensured that credit risk transfer is not simply a passing trend, but the way of the future for the GSEs look to transfer more credit risk to private investors.
Read More »Investor Sues FHFA and Treasury Over GSE Profits
Robinson contends that despite posting record losses for 2007 and the first half of 2008, shortly before the government seized control of them, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were always capable of paying their debts and were never in danger of insolvency. The complaint contends that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took a relatively conservative approach to investing in mortgages during the years 2004 to 2007, the so-called “housing bubble,” during which many institutions were not conservative where the mortgage market was concerned.
Read More »Favorable Conditions Drive Continued Improvements in Housing Market
"Buoyed by strong employment growth, housing supply is struggling to keep pace with demand, which is driving house prices higher," Kiefer said. "Fortunately, low mortgage interest rates are helping to keep homebuying affordable for some prospective homebuyers."
Read More »Freddie Mac Transfers More Credit Risk With $1 Billion STACR Offering
The latest STACR offering, STACR Series 2015-DNA3, is the seventh STACR debt notes offering this year of more than $1 billion by Freddie Mac. It is the 15th STACR offering since the program began slightly more than two years ago. Freddie Mac’s goal is to transfer a portion of its credit risk on single-family loans to private investors.
Read More »Freddie Mac CEO Says Future Is Bright Despite No Plans to End Conservatorship
Layton said Freddie Mac had moved on from the “early-years conservatorship mindset,” which saw the Enterprise being hesitant to take action while it waited for instructions from the government. Now, Layton said, “[w]e’re firmly facing the future, not the past.”
Read More »Treasury Official Decries Push to ‘Recap and Release’ Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
In an editorial titled “How Not to Fix Fannie and Freddie,” Antonio Weiss, Counselor to the Treasury Secretary, called the push to recapitalize the GSEs and release them from the FHFA’s conservatorship “misguided.” Weiss claims that such a “recap and release” proposal, if executed, could raise the cost of mortgages and potentially expose American taxpayers to another bailout.
Read More »New York Fed Says Conservatorships Accomplished Three of Five Objectives
The conservatorships were required by law to put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a “sound and solvent condition” but this focus at times conflicted with other public policy objectives, such as the aggressive enforcement of the GSEs of “representations and warranties” whereby the firms “put back” large volumes of defaulted mortgages to their originators, according to the authors.
Read More »