Tag Archives: Fannie Mae

Now that the Republicans will have a majority in both the House and the Senate and a Republican-led Senate Banking Committee in January, it has been widely speculated that GSE reform will be near the top of their to-do list. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) will become the new chair of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee in January. He previously served as the committee chair from 2003 to 2007 and is a longtime proponent of reforming the conservatorship model.

According to Fannie Mae, the increase was driven primarily by lower fair value losses and an increase in revenues. Also contributing to the third-quarter boost in profits was a recently announced settlement between Goldman Sachs and the GSEs' conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), over faulty residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).

Pershing Square Capital Management CEO William A. Ackman filed a voluntary notice of dismissal in the U.S. District Court for one of his company's lawsuits against the federal government over the sweeping of GSE profits into the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Government-Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have jointly announced that David M. Applegate will be the first CEO of Common Securitization Solutions (CSS), which was created by the GSEs to operate a new secondary mortgage market infrastructure, Common Securitization Platform (CSP).

Where the U.S. housing market is concerned, Fannie Mae chief economist Doug Duncan said he is anticipating overall weaker home sales in 2014 than in 2013. But he expects that overall home sales in 2015 will post their best performance since 2007 despite seeing only moderate growth for the year.

Former OneWest Bank vice chairman Brian P. Brooks is joining Fannie Mae as EVP, general counsel, and corporate secretary, according to an announcement from the company.

The Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) is working to expand availability for mortgage credit in an attempt to give the housing market a lift, and is also working on ways to mitigate risk to GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FHFA director Mel Watt said in a speech delivered on Monday.

In a separate agreement the GSEs and FHFA are also reportedly considering programs that could reopen the door to guarantee some mortgages with down payments as low as 3 percent, including loans to first-time homebuyers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Fannie Mae stopped taking such loans last year, while Freddie Mac stopped guaranteeing them years ago.

Two major investors have shored up their stock in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after a judge dismissed two lawsuits regarding the sweeping of GSE profits into the U.S. Department of Treasury, causing the price of GSE stock to plummet.

A Virginia man has been sentenced for illegally accessing government servers that hosted a Fannie Mae website used to support federal mortgage loan modification programs, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) announced on Friday.