Tag Archives: Fannie Mae

Neighborhoods across the country are riddled with empty bank-owned homes and unoccupied foreclosures that erode neighboring property values and open the door for blight and criminal activity. The nation's glut of vacant REOs took center stage in Washington Wednesday. HUD announced a new nationwide REO ""First Look"" program, in partnership with the nation's largest mortgage lenders, and it was the first of a two-day Federal Reserve summit to examine the community impacts of foreclosed and vacant properties.

Freddie Mac released the results of its second quarter Conventional Mortgage Home Price Index (CMHPI) Monday. The index measures property values based on home loans originated in Q2 and purchased by Freddie and its sibling mortgage financier Fannie Mae. The CMHPI Purchase-Only Series for the United States registered a 3.1 percent increase in the second quarter relative to the first quarter. For the first time since the second quarter of 2009, prices rose in all nine Census divisions.

Fannie Mae is implementing a new policy this week regarding home appraisals. Beginning Wednesday, lenders will be prohibited from making changes to appraisers' valuations - a practice that has become more widespread and is commonly referred to as ""appraisal cutting."" Fannie officials say they have identified cases where the lender reduced the opinion of market value in the appraisal report based upon underwriter judgment or automated valuation models, prompting the GSE to place a ban on so-called appraisal cutting.

Home prices in the U.S. rose in the second quarter of 2010, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). The regulator's purchase-only house price index (HPI) is calculated using sales price data from Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-acquired mortgages, and last quarter was the first time since Q2 2007 that the HPI posted a quarterly increase. The index was 0.9 percent higher on a seasonally adjusted basis in the second quarter than in the first quarter of 2010.

Taxpayers' tab for the government's $700 billion dollar bailout program continues to drop. New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) put the cost of the controversial Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) at $66 billion. That's nearly $45 billion less than the agency's projection just five months ago. The agency's estimates for the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac improved as well. Outlays for the two GSEs are expected to fall from $96 billion in 2009 to $41 billion this year.

Despite the continued efforts of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to find sustainable workouts for delinquent borrowers, the analysts at Standard & Poor's expect the GSEs' foreclosure inventories to continue to swell. The two companies have each already completed about 40 percent more workout volume during the first half of 2010 than they did in all of 2009. Still, the ratings agency says annualized loan workout activity (as a percentage of existing delinquent loans) remains less than half at both institutions.

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives are calling on President Obama and the GSEs' regulator to ""use all of [their] powers to recover money"" from companies that shifted losses on to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They say legal action should be used to recoup funds from the underwriters of faulty mortgages and the issuers of underwater securities that have saddled Fannie and Freddie with hundreds of billions of dollars in bad loans and cost taxpayers almost $150 billion to date.

About 50 percent of the loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac come from the nation's four largest banks - Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citi. Lately, the GSEs have become more aggressive in forcing originators to buy back bad loans. Based on Fannie and Freddie's current ""distressed"" numbers (a combined $354 billion in delinquent mortgages and REOs), Fitch Ratings estimates that the big four could be on the hook to repurchase as much as $180 billion in nonperforming assets.

The lowest mortgage interest rates in more than a half century have kindled a rise in refinancing activity among homeowners looking to reduce their debt and lower monthly payments. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported Wednesday that its index for refinance applications jumped 17.1 percent last week, hitting its highest mark since May of last year. For the past two months, refinancing has accounted for more than 80 percent of conventional loan applications.

Will Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still be here in three years? Or will they be replaced by a new federal mortgage agency? Or will the government begin a grand exodus from the housing market and leave the conveyance of the American Dream to the private sector? These were the questions addressed Tuesday at the administration's housing finance conference in Washington - a discussion that the Treasury says will help shape its proposal for the future of the housing finance system, including the structure of the nation's two largest mortgage companies.