News

Real estate investment trust Redwood Trust, Inc., announced the addition of former Fannie Mae executive Karen R. Pallotta to the company's board of directors.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released a statement warning organizations that label mortgage loans with "super-priority lien" status that such loans will not push loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the secondary position. The warning was aimed mainly at energy retrofit financing programs and homeowners associations that attach super-priority lien status to mortgages because of the risk they pose to taxpayers while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are under conservatorship.

Both foreclosure completions and foreclosure starts on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans continued their steady decline in the third quarter, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)'s Q3 Foreclosure Prevention Report released Monday. The GSEs completed 39,100 foreclosures in Q3, down 9 percent from the 43,000 that were completed in Q2, according to the report.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers announced his office has filed civil lawsuits against two Colorado foreclosure law firms and their affiliated title companies, accusing them of inflating foreclosure costs for homeowners. The civil suits filed against the Hopp firms and the Vaden firm are the latest actions taken in an ongoing investigation by the Colorado AG to cut down on fraud in the foreclosure process.

A popular index gauging leading U.S. economic indicators grew for a third straight month in November, signaling moderate economic growth as the year closes out. The Conference Board's Leading Economic Index (LEI) increased 0.6 percent in November to 105.5, the group reported. Released monthly, the index gauges the potential for future economic growth based on 10 leading components, including homebuilding permits, weekly initial unemployment claims, and average consumer expectations for business conditions.

A Florida man pleaded guilty to fraud charges in connection with a home loan modification scam that targeted distressed borrowers, according to an announcement from Christy Romero, Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) and Stephen R. Wigginton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois.

After slipping in October, purchase and issuance activity picked up again, coming to $29.5 billion, Freddie Mac reported. That was offset by an increase in sales and liquidations, which whittled the portfolio's monthly increase to about $614 million. In other monthly changes, the unpaid principal balance (UPB) of Freddie Mac's mortgage-related investments portfolio fell by approximately $4.7 billion last month, a negative annualized growth rate of 14.0 percent.

Federal bank regulatory agencies have announced the newly-adjusted asset-size thresholds that will be used to define financial institutions under Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) regulations. According to a press release from the Federal Reserve Board, the CRA requires the thresholds to be adjusted annually in order to define institutions as either small banks, small savings associations, intermediate small banks, or intermediate small savings associations for CRA examinations. These asset-size classifications determine how institutions are evaluated under different CRA examination procedures, and determine whether or not financial institutions are subject to certain reporting requirements; those that are classified small or intermediate small are not subject to the same reporting requirements as large financial institutions.

Sales of pre-owned homes stalled out in November, plunging to their slowest pace in half a year only one month after hitting a 2014 high. Despite the stumble, home resales in November were still up 2.1 percent from year-ago levels, making it just the second month in 2014 to see sales rise year-over-year. It's been a year of starts and stops for home sales, which have struggled under the weight of rising mortgage rates (a trend that has reversed in recent months), a tighter lending environment, declining affordability, and a lack of housing stock available for buyers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have completed approximately 3.3 million foreclosure prevention actions in the last six years, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)'s Q3 Foreclosure Prevention Report released Monday. Including the 72,700 foreclosure prevention actions completed by the GSEs in the third quarter, the two Enterprises have performed about 3.3 million such actions since the start of the conservatorship under FHFA in September 2008, according to the report. Nearly 2.8 million of those borrowers were able to stay in their homes as a result of receiving assistance from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.