Tag Archives: MBS

Reiss on Mortgage Lingo

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MainStreet.com quoted me in 10 Terms of Mortgage Industry Lingo for Potential Homeowners to Learn. It reads, in part,

The mortgage industry is no different from the rest of the financial or tech world and is fraught with odd terminology, tons of acronyms and other confusing jargon.

While it appears to be a great deal of inaccessible blather, learning what these terms really mean can save homeowners thousands of dollars as they are negotiating the terms of their mortgage.

Unpacking the lingo is the first step as you sink your hard-earned money into a house for the next 30 years. Pretty soon you can banter about points and closings just like the rest of the experts.

Here are ten terms that we demystify as you prepare you as you embark on one of the largest commitments in your lifetime.

Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae – Is There a Family Connection?

Just who exactly are Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? What about Ginnie Mae? This trio was created by the federal government to support a national market for mortgage credit, said David Reiss, a law professor at Brooklyn Law School in New York. None of these entities interacts directly with homebuyers. Instead, all have the goal to make it easier for mortgage lenders to sell mortgages to investors by promising “those in mortgage-backed securities that they will receive their payments of interest and principal in a timely manner in case borrowers default on their payments,” he said.

After a wave of foreclosures following the Great Depression, Ginnie Mae was created by the government to support affordable housing in the U.S. Now it provides funding for all government-insured or government-guaranteed mortgage loans.

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Points

Real estate brokers and mortgage lenders discuss points quite often, especially as you get closer to finalizing the terms of your mortgage, since they are negotiable. This refers to the percentage points of the loan amount that a lender charges to a borrower for a loan, Reiss said. For instance, if a lender charges 1 point on a $200,000 loan, the borrower will owe an additional $2,000 to the lender at the time the loan is closed.

Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

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  • HSBC facing suit for breaching its duties as trustee for 271 residential mortgage-backed securities trusts.
  • The US Supreme Court considered whether debtors should have an absolute right to appeal denial of proposed bankruptcy plan after three circuit courts have found that debtors can automatically can appeal, while in other jurisdictions, the bankruptcy judge must permit the appeal.
  • BNP Paribas Mortgage Corp. suit from 2009 regarding Bank of America’s mishandling of hundreds of millions of dollars of mortgage-backed notes issued by Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. finally settles.

The Rescue of Fannie and Freddie

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Federal Reserve researchers, W. Scott Frame, Andreas Fuster, Joseph Tracy and James Vickery, have posted a staff report, The Rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The abstract reads,

We describe and evaluate the measures taken by the U.S. government to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008. We begin by outlining the business model of these two firms and their role in the U.S. housing finance system. Our focus then turns to the sources of financial distress that the firms experienced and the events that ultimately led the government to take action in an effort to stabilize housing and financial markets. We describe the various resolution options available to policymakers at the time and evaluate the success of the choice of conservatorship, and other actions taken, in terms of five objectives that we argue an optimal intervention would have fulfilled. We conclude that the decision to take the firms into conservatorship and invest public funds achieved its short-run goals of stabilizing mortgage markets and promoting financial stability during a period of extreme stress. However, conservatorship led to tensions between maximizing the firms’ value and achieving broader macroeconomic objectives, and, most importantly, it has so far failed to produce reform of the U.S. housing finance system.

 This staff report provides a nice overview of the two companies since the financial crisis. I was particularly interested by a couple of sections. First, I found the discussion of receivership versus conservatorship helpful. Second, I liked how it outlined the five objectives for an optimal intervention:

(i) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be enabled to continue their core securitization and guarantee functions as going concerns, thereby maintaining conforming mortgage credit supply.

(ii) The two firms would continue to honor their agency debt and mortgage-backed securities obligations, given the amount and widely held nature of these securities, especially in leveraged financial institutions, and the potential for financial instability in case of default on these obligations.

(iii) The value of the common and preferred equity in the two firms would be extinguished, reflecting their insolvent financial position.

(iv) The two firms would be managed in a way that would provide flexibility to take into account macroeconomic objectives, rather than just maximizing the private value of their assets.

(v) The structure of the rescue would prompt long-term reform and set in motion the transition to a better system within a reasonable period of time. (14-15)

You’ll have to read the paper to see how they evaluate the five objectives in greater detail.

Frannie Conservatorships: What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

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The Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of Inspector General has posted a White Paper, FHFA’s Conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: A Long and Complicated Journey. This White Paper on conservatorships updates a first one that OIG published in 2012. This one notes that over the past six years,

FHFA has administered two conservatorships of unprecedented scope and simultaneously served as the regulator for these large, complex companies that dominate the secondary mortgage market and the mortgage securitization sector of the U.S. housing finance industry. Congress granted FHFA sweeping conservatorship authority over the Enterprises. For example, as conservator, FHFA can exercise decision-making authority over the Enterprises’ multi-trillion dollar books of business; it can direct the Enterprises to increase the fees they charge to guarantee mortgage-backed securities; it can mandate changes to the Enterprises’ credit underwriting and servicing standards for single-family and multifamily mortgage products; and it can set policy governing the disposition of the Enterprises’ inventory of approximately 121,000 real estate owned properties. (2)

I was particularly interested by the foreward looking statements contained in this White Paper:

Director Watt has repeatedly asserted that conservatorship “cannot and should not be a permanent state” for the Enterprises. Director Watt has indicated that under his stewardship FHFA will continue the conservatorships and build a bridge to a new housing finance system, whenever that system is put into place by Congress. In this phase of the conservatorships, FHFA seeks to place more decision-making in the hands of the Enterprises. (3)

Those who have been hoping that the FHFA will act decisively in the face of Congressional inaction should let that dream go. And given that just about nobody believes (I still hope though) that there will be Congressional reform of Fannie and Freddie during the remainder of the Obama Administration, we must face the reality that we are stuck with the conservatorships and all of the risks that they foster for the foreseeable future. Today’s risks include historically high rates of mortgage delinquencies and exposure to defaults by counterparties like private mortgage insurers. As I have said before, the risks that Fannie and Freddie are nothing to laugh at. Let’s hope that the FHFA is up to managing them until Congress finally acts.

Transferring Risk from Fannie & Freddie

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The Federal Housing Finance Agency has posted its FHFA Progress Report on the Implementation of FHFA’s Strategic Plan for the Conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As its name suggests, it provides a progress report on a range of topics, but I was particularly interested in its section on credit risk transfers for single-family credit guarantees:

The 2014 Conservatorship Strategic Plan’s goal of reducing taxpayer risk builds on the Enterprises’ previous risk transfer efforts. Under the 2013 Conservatorship Scorecard, FHFA expressed the expectation that each Enterprise would conduct risk transfer transactions involving single-family loans with an unpaid principal balance (UPB) of at least $30 billion. The 2014 Conservatorship Scorecard tripled the required risk transfer amount, with the expectation that each Enterprise would transfer a substantial portion of the credit risk on $90 billion in UPB of new mortgage-backed securitizations. FHFA also expected each Enterprise to execute a minimum of two different types of credit risk transfer transactions. FHFA required the Enterprises to conduct all activities undertaken in fulfillment of these objectives in a manner consistent with safety and soundness. During 2014, the two Enterprises executed credit risk transfers on single-family mortgages with a UPB of over $340 billion, which is well above the required amounts. (14)

Risk transfer is an important tool to reduce the risks that taxpayers will be on the hook for future bailouts. The mechanism for these risk transfer deals are not well understood because they are pretty new. The Progress Report describes how they work in relatively clear terms:

The primary way that the Enterprises have executed single-family credit risk transfers to date has been through debt-issuance programs. Freddie Mac transactions are called Structured Agency Credit Risk (STACR) notes, and Fannie Mae transactions are called Connecticut Avenue Securities (CAS). Following the release of historical credit performance data in 2012, each Enterprise has issued either STACR or CAS notes that transfer a portion of the credit risk from large reference pools of single-family mortgages to private investors. These reference pools are comprised of loans that the Enterprises had previously securitized to sell the interest rate risk of the loans to private investors. The STACR and CAS transactions take the next step of transferring a portion of the credit risk for these loans to investors as well. Each subsequent credit risk transfer transaction is intended to provide credit protection to the issuing Enterprise on the mortgages in the relevant reference pool. (14)

The Progress Report provides more detail for those who are interested. For the rest of us, we may just want to think through the policy implications. How much credit risk can Fannie and Freddie offload? Is it sufficient to make a real dent in the overall risk that the two companies pose to taxpayers? It would be helpful if the FHFA answered those questions in future reports.

Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

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Reiss on Toxic Debt Claims

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Bloomberg quoted me in Nomura First to Fight U.S. Toxic Debt Claims at Trial. The article reads in part,

Nomura Holdings Inc. will defend claims by a U.S. regulator that it sold defective mortgage-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the 2008 financial crisis, becoming the first bank to take such a case to trial.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, suing on behalf of the two government-owned companies, claims Nomura sold them $2 billion of bonds backed by faulty mortgages. The agency seeks more than $1 billion in damages in the trial, which is set to start Monday in Manhattan federal court.

Nomura, the Tokyo-based investment bank, is choosing to fight claims that 16 other banks settled after the blow-up of toxic mortgage bonds led to the global credit crunch. FHFA has reached $17.9 billion in settlements from banks including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs & Co. If Nomura prevails at trial, it may embolden other firms facing mortgage-related suits to defend themselves rather than settle.

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For Nomura and RBS to succeed, they will have to overcome Cote’s rulings as well as the widely held perception that banks packaged toxic debt and pushed it off on unsuspecting investors, said David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School.

Reiss said Nomura may believe it can show it was more careful than other banks in structuring mortgage-backed bonds and stands a good chance of winning.

As the trial approaches, a settlement becomes less likely, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Elliott Stein and Alison Williams said yesterday. Stein said a resolution this late in the proceedings may exceed his earlier estimate of $100 million to $300 million, particularly if Cote’s rulings continue to favor FHFA.