Secondary Market

Freddie Mac says it cut its total mortgage portfolio by an annualized rate of 5.2 percent in August. The GSE has been downsizing for most of this year. Only two months during the early part of 2010 saw increases in the company's portfolio size. The GSE also reported that its single-family delinquency rate decreased to 3.83 percent in August, down from 3.89 percent the month before. The multifamily delinquency rate, on the other hand, increased to 0.32 percent, up from 0.30 percent in July.

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.

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.

Commercial real estate fundamentals are still ailing from the recession and lack clear signs of near-term improvement. As a result, investors remain focused on core assets and proven markets, according to the third quarter findings of an investor survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The report highlights an improved lending environment and reveals that with a limited number of quality offerings to absorb all the pent-up capital, competition is strong among buyers of top-rated assets.

The analysts at Moody's are downbeat in their outlook for both the U.S. economy and the housing market. They warn that the there's a stronger chance the country will slide back into a recession, and they are forecasting a longer and deeper housing correction. Because of weak housing demand, soft job creation, and the slow speed at which the industry is working through distressed mortgages, Moody's says recovery is already back-sliding into a double-dip. The agency expects house prices to fall until the third quarter of next year.

Fannie Mae announced Monday that more than 29,000 owner occupants have purchased Fannie-owned REO homes over the last year through the GSE's First Look initiative. Fannie Mae also worked with nearly 800 public entities under HUD's Neighborhood Stabilization Program, enabling state and local governments and nonprofit groups to purchase nearly 5,000 foreclosure properties from the GSE's portfolio. Fannie says homebuyers who intend to occupy a home merit priority consideration in its REO sales process.

Given the relative stability of Canadian housing markets, many observers try to draw comparisons between the housing finance policies of Canada and its southern neighbor the United States. Why is it the U.S. suffered through such a painful housing bubble and bust in the last decade, while Canada did not? Despite similarities in their homeownership rates and mortgage lending dominated by government backing, the fates of the two countries' housing markets took very divergent paths.

Fannie Mae says it is working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to develop and adopt new appraiser independence requirements that will replace the controversial Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) enacted by the GSEs in May of last year. Until the revised requirements are released, the existing HVCC provisions are still in effect. Fannie Mae says it expects the new appraisal rules to be issued by October 21, but that they will be ""substantially similar"" to HVCC.

Oklahoma City's a la mode recently announced that Veros Real Estate Solutions has integrated their VeroSELECT and Valuation Risk Management products with the company's Mercury Network vendor management platform. The integration connects Veros' platform clients with one of the industry's largest networks of real estate appraisers and appraisal management companies, and provides electronic appraisal submission in full compliance with the GSE's Uniform Mortgage Data Program (UMDP) requirements.

Fannie Mae has approved 123 new Florida condos for financing in the first eight months of 2010, a 40 percent increase from 2009. It's an even bigger jump from 2008 when zero projects were accepted, according to the local consulting firm Condo Vultures. Florida's real estate crash has made financing difficult. Few lenders are originating new mortgages as prices drop and foreclosures increase, but Fannie Mae is attempting to reverse the financing issue with new ""special approval"" requirements specifically for Florida condominiums.