Secondary Market

Mel Watt, an Obama appointee who could now be at odds with the Obama Administration if the Vitter-Warren bill gets signed by the President, 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.

“Despite mixed housing and mortgage market data, our forecast for housing activity is little changed over the past several months,” Duncan said. “The supply of existing homes remains lean amid slowing new single-family construction, putting significant upward pressure on home prices. While this helps boost home equity, it hurts affordability, especially for potential first-time homebuyers."

Fannie Mae’s credit risk transfer program, Connecticut Avenue Securities (CAS), has sold more than $12.4 billion in securities to private investors, which covers $438 billion worth of mortgage loans since the program’s inception in September 2013. Fannie Mae estimates by the end of 2015, it will have transferred a portion of the credit risk on approximately half a trillion dollars worth of single-family mortgages.

The GSEs’ exposure to credit risk from mortgages originated during the years of the housing bubble continues to be “significant but declining,” according to the FHFA’s Performance and Accountability Report for Fiscal Year 2015. But in addition to experiencing a decline in exposure to credit risk, the GSEs have also experienced significantly declining revenues.

Obama Administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have warned in the last month that such a “recap and release” program for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would put the GSEs at risk of another bailout; however, the GSEs’ Q3 earnings reports showed a $475 million net loss for Freddie Mac and a decline of more than 50 percent in Fannie Mae’s quarterly net income (from $4.6 billion in Q2 down to $2 billion in Q3), prompting their boss, FHFA Director Mel Watt, to declare that they may need a bailout anyway.

Fannie Mae announced the winners in its third NPL sale on Tuesday, and on Monday Freddie Mac announced its eighth NPL transaction of 2015. Both transactions total approximately $1.2 billion in unpaid principal balance (UPB).

According to similar releases from the GSEs, starting on November 13, 2015, Fannie Mae will lower its standard modification interest rate from 4 percent to 3.875 percent. Meanwhile, Freddie Mac will lower its standard modification interest rate by the same amount beginning on November 5, 2015.

The GSEs have been under FHFA conservatorship since September 2008, at which time they needed a combined bailout of $187.5 billion from taxpayers in order to stay afloat and "preserve and conserve their assets and property and restore them to a sound financial condition so they can continue to fulfill their statutory mission of promoting liquidity and efficiency in the nation's housing finance markets," according to FHFA's website.

Though Fannie Mae was profitable in Q3, the Enterprise’s net income and comprehensive income both declined by more than 50 percent from the previous quarter when it reported totals of $4.6 billion and $4.4 billion, respectively. The decline in net income was primarily due to fair value losses which were partially offset by credit-related income.

Freddie Mac’s risk-sharing initiatives include 16 STACR debt note offerings (including this one) and 11 Agency Credit Insurance Structure (ACIS) transactions since becoming the first agency to market credit risk transfer transactions with STACR and ACIS in the middle of 2013.