Tag Archives: Fannie Mae

One of the nation's foremost banking regulators has issued a directive to large mortgage servicers, ordering them to reassess their procedures for foreclosing on defaulted borrowers. John Walsh, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) told lawmakers that he contacted seven institutions his agency supervises, after several large lenders announced a halt on foreclosures in states where filings might contain erroneous paperwork and preparers may have broken the law in their haste to process large volumes of cases.

The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives voted Thursday to extend increased loan limits on mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The higher loan limits of $729,750, which were scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, have been extended for an additional nine months, and are now set to expire September 30, 2011. The approved bill also appropriates $20 billion for the Federal Housing Administration to continue making loan commitments though the end of 2010 for a special risk fund.

The nation's largest mortgage financier is shrinking its portfolio. Fannie Mae reported this week that its holdings declined at a compound annualized rate of 4.1 percent in August, while its total book of business fell by 1.3 percent. At the same time, delinquency levels fell across the board. Fannie Mae's single-family serious delinquency rate dropped 17 basis points in July to 4.82 percent. The multifamily serious delinquency rate declined 6 basis points to 0.74 percent.

Fannie Mae has enhanced its EarlyCheck technology service to help lenders identify eligibility or data issues with loans they plan on selling to the GSE in order to minimize the risk of repurchases. With EarlyCheck, lenders now have access to Fannie Mae delivery data checks at any point in the business process, allowing them to spot and correct potential underwriting errors earlier in the process - from prior to closing through to the pre-delivery stage.

Last week, GMAC Mortgage called for a halt on foreclosures and REO sales in 23 states that may have been impacted by an internal procedural error. The incident could give cause for homeowners to file lawsuits against the lender, bondholders could be impacted, and the problem could reach beyond just GMAC since it also services mortgages for other firms, including the GSEs. A number of analysts have since weighed in on GMAC's foreclosure snafu. Attorneys general in several states are also launching their own investigations.

Legislation to stabilize the foreclosure crisis through the federal government's conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday. The Housing Opportunity and Mortgage Equity (HOME) Act would require Fannie and Freddie to allow borrowers to refinance their mortgages by locking in today's record-low interest rates for longer fixed-term loans. The legislation would affect up to 30 million mortgages held or backed by the two GSEs.

New initiatives are under way in Washington to help service members who are struggling with their mortgage payments avoid foreclosure. The efforts include a mortgage payment forbearance of up to six months where the death or injury of an active-duty service member causes a hardship for military families with a mortgage obligation. Fannie Mae and the U.S. Army made the announcement at a Pentagon event Monday.

According to a statement released by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the companies are in the process of developing the Uniform Appraisal Dataset (UAD) to improve the quality and consistency of appraisal data on loans delivered to the GSEs. Business and technical details of the UAD, implementation dates for the Uniform Collateral Data Portal (UCDP), and use of the UAD and UCDP are expected to be released later this year. Implementations will occur in 2011.

The August Mortgage Monitor report released Friday by Lender Processing Services shows that foreclosure starts are continuing to accelerate, with the GSEs displaying more aggressive timelines on early stage delinquencies. Last month, the company tracked 282,528 newly initiated foreclosures. That's 20 percent above a year ago and the highest level recorded by LPS since January of this year, when there were 287,865. As of August month end, there had been more than 2 million foreclosure starts so far this year.

Banks that sold bad mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a contractual obligation to buy the loans back, according to their regulator. But many of the nation's largest institutions aren't living up to their end of that commitment. The director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency says that as of the end of the second quarter, Fannie Mae had $4.7 billion in outstanding repurchase requests, and Freddie Mac had $6.4 billion -- more than a third of which have been outstanding for more than 90 days.