Tag Archives: Freddie Mac

Approximately 511,000 borrowers who received HAMP mods in 2010 are due to reset in 2015 and face the prospect of increased interest rates, commonly known as "step-ups." Treasury and the GSEs are reaching out to assist borrowers who have trouble absorbing the increased monthly payments.

With GSE reform a hot topic among government officials and those in the housing industry, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a report stating that the "path forward for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac does not look promising" and that failure to wind down the GSEs equated to a "colossal missed opportunity" to put U.S. residential housing finance on more stable footing.

Just as it reported for December's national index, Freddie Mac reported that January's national MiMi value of 74.6 indicated a weak housing market and even declined slightly (0.20 percent) month-over-month despite a year-over-year increase of 3.39 percent

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac required a combined taxpayer bailout of $188 billion in 2008 after the government seized control of them. The two GSEs returned to profitability in 2012. The future of the two GSEs has been a hotly contested topic in Washington as well as in the rest of the housing industry. Both parties appear to want to wind down the FHFA's conservatorship of the two, but cannot agree on what, if anything, should replace them as well as what role the government should play in housing, if any.

Freddie Mac's total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 2.8 percent in February, marking the fifth time the portfolio has expanded in the last six months, while the serious delinquency rate for the Enterprise's single-family residential loans continued its steady decline, according to Freddie Mac's February 2015 Monthly Volume Summary released Tuesday.

Less than a week after announcing its intention to sell its second Structured Agency Credit Risk (STACR) offering this year, Freddie Mac announced on Tuesday that it has priced the offering at $860 million.

This will be the second time in as many months that Ocwen has announced an MSR sale on an Agency portfolio of residential loans to Dallas, Texas-based Nationstar. In February, Ocwen announced its intention to sell the MSR on a portfolio of about 81,000 performing residential loans owned by Freddie Mac with a UPB of about $9.8 billion to Nationstar.

Freddie Mac's conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), is requiring Freddie Mac and its fellow GSE, Fannie Mae, to reduce the number of non-performing residential loans in their portfolios. This will be Freddie Mac's third sale of nonperforming loans since last summer. In August, the Enterprise sold a bundle of NPLs totaling $596 million and one in February that covered $392 in UPB. Sales of NPLs by the two Enterprises generally include loans that are seriously delinquent, which are those that are 90 days or more past due.

Servicers are now required to evaluate mortgage loans backed by the two GSEs and actively reach out to borrowers to offer a streamlined loan modification if the mortgage loan was previously modified to include a step-rate feature (which allows for a gradual rate increase in the first few years) and if the mortgage rate becomes 60 days delinquent in the first 12 months following a rate increase.

The STACR offering announced Thursday is the GSE’s second this year and 11th 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.