B of A Ceases Mortgage Sales to Fannie Mae

""Bank of America"":https://www.bankofamerica.com/ announced Thursday that it will cease making new refinance mortgage sales to ""Fannie Mae"":http://www.fanniemae.com/portal/index.html as the mortgage heavyweights tangle over sensitive buyback claims from the financial crisis.

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The bank will stop selling first-lien refinance loans to the GSE for securitization purposes this month, it said in a ""filing"":http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/71/71595/2011_10-K_As_Filed.pdf with the ""Securities and Exchange Commission"":http://www.sec.gov/.

Bank of America cited ""contractual delivery commitments

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and variances"" for a halt in sales against a backdrop of legal wrangling with Fannie Mae that it called ""inconsistent"" with past statements.

Dan Frahm, a spokesperson with Bank of America, tells us that the bank's relationship change with Fannie Mae will continue with respect to residential mortgage loan volume.

""This decision will not affect the credit available to our customers, and we will rely on other sources of liquidity to continue to ensure we are lending to our customers and supporting the housing market recovery,"" says Dan Frahm, a spokesperson with Bank of America.

He tells us that the relationship change will impact residential mortgage loan sales, not activities with the Home Affordable Refinance Program.

""We remain focused on supporting our customers with loan modifications and refinancing through the Making Home Affordable program, and those solutions will not be impacted,"" he adds.

Referencing a report by _Inside Mortgage Finance_, the _New York Times_ said that Bank of America accounted for $37.7 billion, or roughly one-third, of Fannie Mae's mortgage purchases last year.