Economy

As officials prepare plans for the government-sponsored enterprises' exit from conservatorship, there's no shortage of speculation about what those plans might look like and how they might affect the mortgage industry.

James Cotins and Matthew Lyons will work with lead partners Lee Askenazi and Robert Villani at the New York-based firm, joining from Alston & Bird.

There are clear actions that regulators at the CFPB, SEC and FHFA can take to help attract investors into the housing market, argues former FHFA Director Ed DeMarco.

Director Mark Calabria urged lawmakers to grant the agency chartering authority similar to that of bank regulators to boost competition in the mortgage market.

Prepayment speeds for loans included in agency mortgage-backed securities were up approximately 20% both monthly and annually during May as the decline in interest rates boosted activity, according to Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has far more authority to upend the status quo than most realize, according to a new report.

The consolidation of the two companies' securitization platforms into a single bond market became official on Monday.

The nonconforming market is ready to absorb most of the government-sponsored enterprise loans covered by the QM patch, but not all of them, according Redwood Trust.

The launch of a combined securitization platform for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is meant to ease the transition to a new housing finance system. But questions remain about how the mortgage sphere will adapt to the single security.

The large number of overleveraged commercial mortgage-backed securities loans coming due in 2019 is likely to cause the payoff rate to drop an additional 9 percentage points by December, a Morningstar report said.

Delinquencies associated with the government-sponsored enterprises high loan-to-value ratio programs that target low-to-moderate income homebuyers are slightly better than expected, at least early on, according to Fitch.

Government-sponsored enterprise executives say they want to continue to offer credit risk transfers and guarantee-fee parity after the GSEs are released from conservatorship, but they might not be able to.

Although higher corporate debt could hurt the economy, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell argued changes made since the last crisis will guard against a meltdown.

With prospects for government-sponsored enterprise reform improving, players in the private residential mortgage-backed securities market are starting to think about how they could better compete against the GSEs while awaiting change.

His administration is looking at different alternatives to reform the housing finance system.

Farmers were already taking on more debt to cover losses from falling crop prices. New tariffs and other retaliatory moves could hurt ag borrowers further and lead to loan losses and tighter underwriting.

In his first public policy speech as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Mark Calabria stressed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will have to raise significant capital via a public offering and take other steps in order to escape government control.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has named three senior advisers for policy, economics and communications.

The Government Accountability Office called on Ginnie Mae to undertake four reforms to its operations, citing concerns regarding the ongoing shift in size and capitalization of mortgage-backed securities issuers.

The large single-loan transaction covers two lab-office facilities in the Boston area's crowded life sciences corridor near MIT.