Inside Mort Fin 3
Mike SP
Ginnie to Align Liquidation Reporting With GSE Standards
Ginnie Mae is set to require issuers to report the removal of single-family loans from its mortgage-backed security pools on the business day following the liquidation event, aligning its policies with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac standards.
The agency plans to implement the change during the February reporting period. The new liquidation event reporting process will co-exist with the required issuer monthly report of pool and loan data.
Ginnie President Joe Gormley said the move will make the agency’s platform more resilient, while reducing the need for issuers to maintain different reporting processes for Ginnie and the government-sponsored enterprises.
Industry participants welcomed the move. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its members see value in switching to short-term liquidation reporting.
For more details, see the new issue of Inside MBS & ABS.
Mike SP
Former Freddie CEO Raises Concerns on Changes to CRT Program
Former Freddie Mac CEO Don Layton said in a recent essay for New York University’s Furman Center that changes to the credit risk transfer program are adding to an excessive concentration of credit risk at the government-sponsored enterprises.
According to Layton, the program began to change in mid-2019, when President Trump — then in his first term — appointed Mark Calabria to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Layton pointed out that Calabria was a long-time critic of the GSEs and a CRT skeptic.
It was the new enterprise regulatory capital framework put in place by Calabria in late 2020 that was most damaging to the CRT programs, Layton said. He argued that the ERCF underestimated the capital relief the GSEs received from their CRT transactions. As a result, those transactions began to look uneconomic in the sense that the capital benefits no longer seemed to justify the fees paid to investors.
For more details, see the new issue of Inside The GSEs.
Mike SP
Lenders repurchased or made other indemnification on defective loans from government-sponsored enterprise mortgage-backed securities totaling $602.29 million in the third quarter, a 19.8% increase from the second quarter, according to filings by the GSEs with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Fannie Mae said in its SEC filing that repurchases by dollar volume were up 37.9% in the third quarter. Freddie Mac repurchases were up 5.3% from the second quarter, according to its third-quarter SEC filing
Roughly half of the combined third-quarter repurchases involved loans securitized in 2024, when Fannie/Freddie mortgage-backed securities issuance was up 7.3% from the prior year.
At this point, the 2024 vintage still looks relatively pristine, with a repurchase rate of just 0.20%, which is significantly lower than the 0.33% buyback rate on loans securitized in 2023.
For more details, see the new issue of Inside the GSEs.
Mike SP
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been building up their portfolios of retained agency mortgage-backed securities at a strong pace since the end of the third quarter.
At the end of November, the two government-sponsored enterprises held $104.56 billion of agency MBS in retained portfolios. That was up $31.99 billion from the end of September, a 44.1% increase.
Many observers have urged the Federal Housing Finance Agency to push the GSEs to increase their MBS holdings as a way to increase investor demand for the asset and indirectly tighten spreads and lower mortgage rates.
The biggest growth has been in Fannie's portfolio agency MBS, which rose 56.7% over the past two months to $65.19 billion at the end of November. Most of that, some $55.35 billion, are Fannie MBS.
Freddie's agency MBS holdings were up 27.1% from September, hitting $39.37 billion in November. The company doesn't detail the composition of its agency portfolio in its monthly reports.
Fannie Mae said in its December housing forecast that it expects home sales to increase 7% year over year from 2025 to 2026…FHFA Adopts New Housing Goals for the GSEs
The Federal Housing Finance Agency has finalized new three-year affordable housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
FHFA is required to set affordable housing goals for the government-sponsored enterprises' purchases of single-family and multifamily mortgages. The recently announced plan supplants the three-year plan covering 2025 to 2027 that was adopted during the Biden administration.
The new goals include lowering target percentages for low-income single-family mortgages to be purchased annually by the GSEs from 25% to 21% and the very-low-income single-family mortgages target declining from 6.0% to 3.5%.
For multifamily housing, goals remained unchanged with the lower-income target staying at 61% and the very-low-income target remaining at 14%.
Mike SP
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will permit lenders to continue to use a credit scoring model based on the "tri-merge" method of accounting for consumer credit reports provided by the nation’s three credit reporting agencies.
Mike SP
Fannie Mae earlier this month announced expanded features to its HomeStyle renovation-type loan options, in an effort to support affordable housing.
The most obvious change is a rebranding of the HomeStyle Energy product, which was designed to help borrowers increase the energy efficiency of their home and reduce utility costs. Homeowners could borrow up to 15% of the as-completed appraised value of the home to finance projects such as upgraded energy and water systems, installation of solar equipment or paying off energy-related debt.
Rebranded as HomeStyle Refresh, this loan product has largely ditched the energy efficiency angle for a straightforward small renovation loan program. It retains some of the financing and eligibility terms from HomeStyle Energy, though.
Renovation costs, for example, are still limited to 15% of the as-completed appraised value and HomeStyle Refresh sticks to the standard maximums for loan-to-value ratios: 97% for a purchase loan on a principal residence, 90% on a second home and 85% for an investment home.
For more details, see the latest edition of Inside The GSEs.
Mike SP
Money market managers, foreign investors and insurance companies remain major players in the residential mortgage-backed securities market, but some smaller investor sectors are making noise on the sidelines.
Overall, the supply of residential MBS outstanding rose just 0.7% during the third quarter, to an estimated $9.845 trillion at the end of September, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. There are more estimates than usual in the latest update as a result of a delay in the release of the Federal Reserve’s Z1 data, which the agency attributed to the government shutdown.
Agency single-family MBS were up 0.6%, with Ginnie Mae (1.9% increase) accounting for the fastest growth. Freddie Mac MBS outstanding rose 0.1% from the end of September, while the Fannie Mae market barely moved.
The supply of second-level Supers issued by the two government-sponsored enterprises actually fell 0.9%, while outstanding Ginnie Platinum MBS rose 2.3% during the quarter.
For more details, see this edition of Inside MBS & ABS.
Mike SP
2028 is fine as long as pps goes up
FHFA finalizes
housing goals with key change from proposed rule
Title above is link to entire story
The Federal Housing Finance Agency issued a final rule establishing housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 2026 through 2028, which included one change not included in the proposed rule.
Mike SP
Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, expressed frustration Monday regarding pricing tactics by credit bureaus for credit scores tied to mortgages.
“I do not understand what the credit bureaus are doing with their pricing,” he wrote on X. “They are inviting a lot of scrutiny that is only intensifying by the day.”
Pulte added that he has had discussions with the leaders of credit bureaus but he isn’t satisfied with the companies’ actions.
“I have communicated with the credit bureaus’ CEOs on related issues [to those raised by the Mortgage Bankers Association] but it is falling on deaf ears,” he wrote. “We will protect the American consumer.”
Mike SP
Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, applauded moves
by homebuilders to reduce their emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
However, he said additional changes are needed.
“All of this will be looked at as Fannie [Mae’s] and Freddie [Mac’s] liquidity
to builders should not be funding nonsense,” he wrote on X Monday...
Mike SP
Deliveries of mortgages to the government-sponsored enterprises helped to push up the overall securitization rate during the third quarter of 2025.
Some 69.8% of mortgages originated during the quarter were securitized, according to a new analysis by Inside MBS & ABS. That was up from a securitization rate of 64.9% in the previous quarter and nearly level compared with the securitization rate seen during the third quarter of 2024.
The securitization rate for GSE-eligible mortgages increased from 66.3% in the second quarter of 2025 to 72.4% in the third quarter. The shift indicates that execution levels for GSE securitization improved during the third quarter compared with other alternatives for GSE-eligible mortgages, such as a bank retaining the loans in portfolio.
The securitization rate for GSE-eligible mortgages has moved up and down in recent years, but the rate seen in the third quarter of 2025 is similar to the securitization rate in 2019, prior to when the pandemic shook up the mortgage market.
For more details, see Inside MBS & ABS.
Mike SP
Rocket, Mr. Cooper Team-Up Becomes Top GSE Seller - click title to open
Rocket Mortgage and Mr. Cooper Group sold $90.58 billion in mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2025, according to the latest Inside The GSEs ranking and analysis.
The figure made the new combined entity the new king of the hill for government-sponsored enterprise loan sales, selling more production to the GSEs than United Wholesale Mortgage.
UWM delivered $86.11 billion in mortgages into Fannie and Freddie MBS in 2025, a 22.2% increase from 2024. The wholesale lender held a 12.0% market share last year.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued a combined $719.21 billion in single-family mortgage-backed securities in 2025, a 7.5% increase from 2024. Small- and mid-sized nonbanks saw a noticeable decline in GSE sales volume, with deliveries falling 21.6% from 2024 to 2025.
For more details, see the new issue of Inside The GSEs.
DOJ Opens Investigation Into Fed Chair Powell ( (click title to open )
On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas and opened a criminal investigation into Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.
Powell said in a speech on Sunday that the investigation is related to testimony he provided to the Senate Banking Committee in June. The testimony was on the topic of cost overruns for ongoing renovations at Federal Reserve office buildings.
He stated in his speech that he believes the investigation is a pretext. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” Powell said.
Powell said he will continue to serve in his role until his term ends in May. “I will continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do, with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people,” he said.
Mike SP
Loan quality on deliveries to the government-sponsored enterprises improved during the fourth quarter of 2025.
According to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of loan-level GSE mortgage-backed security disclosures, the share of mortgages with higher credit scores and lower loan-to-value ratios increased.
The shift in credit scores was driven by refinance activity, while characteristics of purchase mortgages held relatively steady.
The share of refis with a credit score of at least 740 increased from 59.97% of GSE business in the third quarter to 73.28% in the fourth. The lost market share was most pronounced in loans with credit scores between 620 and 699, where the share of GSE refi business dropped from 20.49% in the third quarter to 11.41% in the fourth.
For more details, see Inside Mortgage Trends.