Tag Archives: Freddie Mac

The STACR offering in late May priced at $425.6 million was Freddie Mac's fourth this year and 13th overall. Freddie Mac has laid off a substantial portion of credit risk for more than $280 billion in unpaid balances on single-family mortgages through STACR transactions.

EXPOs differ from Freddie Mac's Standard Pool Offerings in that the loans include smaller pool sizes and a longer marketing period. Freddie Mac is targeting smaller investors with its EXPO auctions, which are intended to give these investors extra time to secure funding to participate in the NPL sales. Freddie Mac began marketing the pool of loans on April 21 and encouraged private investors, minority- and women-owned businesses, non-profits, and neighborhood advocacy funds to bid in the auction, subject to meeting bidder qualification requirements.

Becketti brings extensive mortgage market research, modeling, and analytics experience to his new role at Freddie Mac, the GSE said. In his role as chief economist, he will be expected to lead a team that forecasts mortgage and housing market trends and conducts analysis and research on economic and policy issues affecting Freddie Mac.

One of the steps Freddie Mac lists for borrowers to take in order to avoid being the victim of a scam is, first and foremost, calling your servicer. The borrower's servicer is the only one who can modify the mortgage or finalize a loss mitigation plan – anyone other than the servicer who professes the ability to do so is a scammer, especially if they require the payment of an upfront fee.

For the government-sponsored enterprise guaranty rating, Fitch notes that the GSEs as a whole are the primary drivers of this rating’s unconditional guarantee of full and timely payment on the MBS that secures the bonds. Additionally, the performance of the underlying loans or MBS servicer is not factored into the rating on the bonds.

Despite economic growth taking a step backward, the forecast for housing for the rest of the year remains positive, according to Fannie Mae SVP and chief economist Doug Duncan. New home sales increased by 6.8 percent in April up to 517,000 annualized units; the National Association of Realtors' Pending Home Sales Index has risen by 14 percent in the last 12 months; existing home sales are at a nine-year high; and purchase applications recovered at the end of May from a slow first half of the month up near a two-year high.

Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, wrote on the American Action Forum's blog, "The Daily Dish," earlier this week that logic would dictate large reforms to the housing finance system following the crash, yet no such large reform has taken place.

Meanwhile, the serious delinquency rate on Freddie Mac-backed single-family mortgage loans, dropped by seven basis points down to 1.66 percent, its lowest level since reporting 1.52 percent in November 2008 just as the crisis was beginning.

"In this month's MiMi three more states and seven metro areas moved within range of their benchmark level of activity," Keifer said. "However, as we've mentioned before, we're likely to see bouts of affordability shock with mortgage rate swings for the remainder of this year as market participants try to anticipate Fed timing around rising short term interest rates and expectations for global growth wax and wane."

The STACR offering priced on Tuesday is the GSE’s fourth this year and 13th overall. Freddie Mac began the STACR program in the second half of 2013 as part of the Enterprise’s goal of reducing risk to taxpayers by increasing private capital’s role in the mortgage market.