Fannie Mae-No Politics (FNMA)

[navycmdr]

What We’re Hearing: Not Much Time Left for the GSE ‘Gang of Four’

Don (Heart) Fannie and Freddie

Go Ahead, Keep on Suing

Why Join a Company That’s in Conservatorship ?

CoreLogic Reduces its Head Count

CMLA Not Amused

Friday, March 30 2018 ... By Paul Muolo ... [e-mail]



By the fall of 2018, Dave Stevens will no longer head the Mortgage Bankers Association, and key GSE legislators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) will be leaving for a Congressional retirement cruise. A few months after that, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt will step down when his term ends in early 2019.

With this GSE “brain drain,” will the debate in Washington surrounding the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac change dramatically? Don’t bet on it, some industry stakeholders told us this week. The bottom line is this: President Trump is (obviously) pro-business and will do little to mess with something – housing finance – that appears to be working quite well…

Plus, Trump likes the money the GSEs are upstreaming to Treasury via the earnings sweep, not to mention their federal income tax payments…


Even though GSE investors suing the government over profit sweep changes made back in 2012 continue to struggle in court, additional lawsuits are being filed against Uncle Sam. For more details, see the new edition of Inside The GSEs…

It’s not every day that a well-regarded economist leaves a large publicly traded mortgage/real estate vendor to join a federally controlled mortgage giant that’s been in conservatorship for 10 years.

In this instance, that economist is Sam Khater of CoreLogic and the mortgage giant is Freddie Mac. IMFnews broke the story this week. A longer version also appears in the new edition of Inside The GSEs…

Then again, CoreLogic earned $152.1 million in 2017 compared to $5.6 billion for Freddie. At yearend 2017, CoreLogic employed 5,900, a reduction of 400 full-timers over the previous 12 months, according to figures contained in its public filings. Freddie continues to add workers and now has roughly 6,145 full-time equivalents on staff…

The Community Mortgage Lenders of America is still hopping mad over a recent white paper published by the Brookings Institute that calls into question the financial viability of nonbanks that now control the Ginnie Mae market.

The Brookings paper, authored by Federal Reserve researchers and private sector academics, describes how nonbanks are vulnerable to “liquidity pressures” in their origination and servicing and how their meager resources may not help them weather a shock as severe as the 2008 financial crisis.

As CMLA noted in a recent press statement, the paper is “short on data” and community lenders view it as “long on conjecture.” The trade group adds: “The paper needs far more analysis and work, unless its chief goal is political in nature.”