Tag Archives: Fannie Mae

The “Appraisal Findings Report,” which is available through Message Manager, will be updated in April to include the CU feedback. The report, which is available to Fannie Mae sellers and services, covers appraisals submitted to the UCPD in the prior month and is generally available on the fifth business day of each month. The new report will replace three separate reports Fannie Mae currently provides by combining that information into one file.

Hiring of the current CAE, John Forlines, was flawed for multiple reasons. One, he had not been identified for the CAE role in the senior management’s Succession Plan. The Succession Plan found that there was no internal candidate who was “ready now” for the CAE position and that a permanent successor would require an “external” candidate. Fannie Mae decided to compile a list of internal candidate six months after the Succession Plan was released.

One area where Duncan said needs improvement in order for the prediction of the economy "dragging housing upward" to come true is in the area of wage gains. According to the BLS employment report released last week, the average hourly wage increased from January to February by only 3 cents up to $24.78 – after rising by 12 cents from December to January.

Other metrics that changed little month-over-month in February, according to BLS, include the civilian labor force participation rate (62.8 percent, and it has remained between 62.7 and 62.9 since April 2014), the number of long-term unemployment persons, or those unemployed for more than 27 weeks (2.7 million), involuntary part-time workers, or workers employed part-time for economic reasons (6.6 million), persons marginally attached to the labor force (2.2 million), and discouraged workers, or those who are not currently looking for work because they believe there are no jobs available (732,000).

According to Stegman, under the current system taxpayers remain at risk and the government has yet to provide a long-term plan for the housing market. Under conservatorship GSE senior employees can reap substantial profits while leaving taxpayers the burden of covering the enormous losses. Flaws like this one can only be changed by law.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac released a mortgage program allowing borrowers to put a down payment of a little as three percent, in December of last year. The program was set to target individuals with good credit, but low cash flow. This program has drawn much controversy, with some saying this kind of risky lending is what caused the financial crisis.

These two transactions together represent approximately $55 billion in unpaid principal balance for which Ocwen has agreed in the last week to sell the mortgage servicing rights. Both of the transactions are expected to be completed in the next six months. According to Ocwen's announcement, the Atlanta-based servicer expects the two transactions will generate approximately $550 million in proceeds and "accelerate Ocwen's strategy to reduce the size of its Agency servicing portfolio."

The strengthening employment sector, declining commodity prices, and rising income prices are some reasons 2015 is set for a pickup, according to Fannie Mae’s Economic & Strategic Research (ESR) Group.

U.S. home prices rose for the 14th consecutive quarter by 1.4 percent, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's House Price Index released Thursday. The price increase was seen in the purchase-only, seasonally adjusted index in the fourth quarter of 2014.

The American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) International Center on Housing Risk reported another rise in mortgage origination risk in January, marking five straight months of increasingly risky lending. Researchers at the center say the rise in risk is due to a shift in market share from large banks to non-banks, whose practices are "substantially riskier than the large bank business."