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Tag Archives: Freddie Mac

FHFA Fills COO and Senior Examiner Roles

Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), has announced the appointments of Richard B. Hornsby, as FHFA's COO and Jon Greenlee as the agency's deputy director of the division of enterprise regulation. Hornsby served at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco for 26 years, holding a variety of senior level management and banking supervision positions. Greenlee joins FHFA from KPMG LLP, where he was the managing director in the financial services regulatory advisory practice.

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Inspector General Points Out FHFA Shortcomings

The Office of the Inspector General for the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA-OIG) submitted its semiannual report to Congress reviewing FHFA's actions from April 2011 through September 2011. The FHFA-OIG pointed out several positive developments over the six-month period, including an elimination of the ""golden parachute"" compensation packages often offered to terminated GSE executives. However, these were balanced by a list of areas in need of improvement, most notably that FHFA does not conduct its own reviews of critical operations.

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Prices of Homes Backing GSE Mortgages Up 0.2% in Third Quarter

Home prices rose in the third quarter of 2011, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) house price index released Tuesday. The index is calculated using home sales price information from Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-acquired mortgages. It rose 0.2 percent between the second and third quarters. Even with the marginal uptick during the summer months, FHFA's gauge shows that over the past year, home prices have fallen 3.7 percent when compared to the third quarter of 2010.

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CoreLogic Rolls Out New Services to Assist Lenders with HARP 2.0

CoreLogic has announced a new set of services designed specifically to address the anticipated increase in refinance activity expected from revisions to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). Many lenders are expected to look to third-party providers to help them manage the expected spike in mortgage refinancing. CoreLogic says its new HARP 2.0 offerings will combine the company's data and analytics with experienced teams of outsourcing professionals to improve operational pull-through.

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Freddie Mac Adds Six States to Winter REO Sales Promo

Freddie Mac has expanded its winter REO sales incentive program to the states of Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oregon, and Washington. That makes the promotional offer now active in 33 states and the District of Columbia. The winter sales promo is being offered through HomeSteps, Freddie Mac's REO disposition unit, and pays an extra $1,000 bonus to the selling agent, as well as additional incentives to owner occupant buyers. Offers must be received by January 31, 2012.

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Thirty-Year Mortgage Rate Drops to 3.98%, ARMs Hit New Lows

Data released by Freddie Mac Wednesday shows mortgage interest rates across the board edged lower for the shortened holiday week, with the 30-year fixed rate slipping to its second-lowest reading on record and adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) setting new all-time lows. The 30-year fixed-mortgage rate has averaged at or below 4 percent for four consecutive weeks now. For the week ending November 23, Freddie Mac's study puts it at 3.98 percent. The 5-year ARM is now averaging 2.91 percent, and the 1-year ARM is 2.79 percent.

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New York’s Baum Law Firm to Close

New York's largest foreclosure law firm is shutting its doors. Steven J. Baum, PC has found itself embroiled in a PR firestorm, and now, after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac instructed servicers to pull their business from the firm, it's closing up shop. The firm's principal, Steven Baum, signaled his company was about to go dark late last week in a letter to New York Times columnist Joe Nocera. ""Mr. Nocera -- You have destroyed everything and everyone related to Steven J. Baum PC. It took 40 years to build this firm and three weeks to tear down,"" Baum wrote.

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Ratings Agency Sees Promise in Corker’s Bill for Housing Finance Reform

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee introduced legislation in early November aiming to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the next 10 years and replace the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) with a new government-run registry. According to the ratings agency DBRS, Corker's proposal could give the private market for mortgage securitizations a much needed boost, and the creation of a new MERS database could ease investor concerns over the legal battles facing the original system.

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Lawmaker Questions If GSE Penalties Contributed to Foreclosure Abuses

Did policies in place at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac help fuel foreclosure abuses such as robo-signing? That's the question posed by Rep. Elijah Cummings to the GSEs' regulator. As ranking member of a House oversight committee, the nation's housing crisis has been a central focus of Cummings' work. He says documents show FHFA directed the GSEs to fine servicers $150 million in 2010 for not processing foreclosures fast enough, even though an internal report concluded servicers were overloaded and documentation problems were evident.

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Congress Raises FHA Loan Limit

Lawmakers voted late Thursday to increase the ceiling for loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Included in a ""minibus"" spending bill passed by both the House and Senate was an amendment to restore the FHA loan limit to $729,750 in high cost areas. The maximum loan limit was lowered from that amount to $625,500 on October 1st for government housing agencies, including FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. The loan limits for Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-backed mortgages were not raised with the newly passed measure.

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