Tag Archives: Fannie Mae

The secondary reserve could also be referred to as an escrow account, where funds are held until a resolution is created on GSE reform. The bill would establish a secondary reserve by inserting the new language into the existing statutes.

According to FHFA, nearly 41,000 out of those 65,900 foreclosure prevention actions (62 percent) completed in Q4 were permanent loan modifications; 33 percent of borrowers who received loan mods had their payments reduced by 30 percent or more, according to FHFA.

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.

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.

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.

Mudd, the CEO of Fannie Mae during the years leading up to the housing crash (2005 to 2008), and former Fannie Mae executives Enrico Dallavecchia (chief risk officer) and Thomas A. Lund (EVP), requested that U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty grant them summary judgment on the grounds that the SEC had not shown evidence that the GSE misled or made false statements to investors about its subprime portfolio.

The temporary factors that slowed economic growth include a drawdown in inventory, unusually high snowfall in some parts of the country, and the West Coast port slowdown. Fannie Mae expects the reducing of those factors in the second quarter combined with upbeat labor market conditions and positive consumer and business fundamentals to push GDP growth to 2.8 percent in 2015, ahead of 2014's pace of 2.4 percent.

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.

In a white paper released Wednesday titled "The Continued Profitability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is Not Assured," the Office of Inspector General of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) warned that the profitability of the two GSEs may not continue due to their having to rely on core earnings for profits in the future.

In an update on its website dated March 2, Ocwen announced that it had "signed a letter of intent with a buyer on the sale of mortgage servicing rights (MSRs) on a portfolio consisting of approximately 277,000 performing Agency loans owned by Fannie Mae with a total unpaid principal balance of approximately $45 billion." In that March 2 update, Ocwen wrote that the transaction was "subject to a definitive agreement, approvals by Fannie Mae and FHFA and other customary conditions, Ocwen expects the transaction to close by mid-year and the loan servicing to transfer over the course of the second half of 2015."