Fannie Mae

At long last, HARP 2.0 is available to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers who want to refinance but owe more on their mortgages than their houses now are worth. HARP 2.0 - HARP stands for Home Affordable Refinance Program - is being billed as an improvement over the three-year-old version that just about everyone acknowledges didn't help anyone. The reason for that failure: The original program had limits on loan-to-value ratio, the amount of a mortgage as a percentage of the appraised value of a property.

By John E. Sununu For most Americans, Friday afternoons are filled with positive anticipation of the weekend. In Washington, though, Friday afternoons are when government officials dump stories they want to bury. (Good news is dropped on Mondays, so bureaucrats can talk about it all week.) So when the Securities and Exchange Commission chose a recent Friday to announce a lawsuit against six former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives, it wasn't because the Obama administration wanted to draw attention to the action.

The Senate yesterday approved legislation aimed at preventing massive taxpayer bailouts of two government-backed enterprises that together stand behind $900 billion in home mortgages. The measure, approved 77-19, would tighten federal oversight of the Federal National Mortgage Association, called Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Mortage Corp., known as Freddie Mac. Although both enterprises are owned by stockholders, they are chartered by Congress and back loans that are implicitly guaranteed by the federal government.

The nation's largest supplier of mortgage credit now requires local lenders to cancel private mortgage insurance if it is judged to be unnecessary. The new rule covers conventional loans purchased or financed by the Federal National Mortgage Association, or Fannie Mae, so it does not cover all mortgages. Nor does it cover all lenders. The company purchased loans last year from 1,600 lenders. But nearly 4,000 lenders have agreed to follow Fannie Mae's guidelines, making the effect of the new rule wider than it first appeared.

The man who might have the biggest stake in Philadelphia's future isn't Mayor Rendell. It isn't City Council President John Street either. Nor is it the chief executive of a big corporation. The man with the biggest bet on the city's future - $2.1 billion to be exact - is an art-loving, 6-foot-4 African-American from Houston who's been in town only four years. His name is Kenneth J. Bacon. He is senior vice president for the northeast regional office of Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae is not a chain of restaurants.

It's called DHC, or Desktop Housing Counselor, and all 25 Philadelphia housing counseling agencies soon will be using it, thanks to Fannie Mae. The Federal National Mortgage Association, the nation's largest source of mortgage funds, developed the computer program and is donating copies of the software to the city-subsidized non-profits to help process the thousands of potential homebuyers they counsel each year. Serving these low- and moderate-income clients, who often have income or credit problems, is a time-consuming job that generates tons of paperwork - two things that DHC is designed to significantly reduce, said Barry Zigas, who heads Fannie Mae's housing impact division.

Fannie Mae, the nationwide mortgage company, opened a Philadelphia Mortgage Help Center today to provide free education and counseling to Philadelphia-area residents struggling with foreclosure issues. The center, at 399 Franklin Mills Circle in the Northeast, is the latest of nine to open across the country. The services are available only for homeowners with a mortgage owned by Fannie Mae and require an appointment, which can be made by calling 866-442-8570.    - Alan J. Heavens  

Recent home buyer Daniel Dougherty of the Northeast pondered the question, "Did you know Fannie Mae bought your mortgage?" His responses probably were typical of those that would come from many other home buyers: He didn't know Fannie Mae bought the mortgage. He wasn't even sure what Fannie Mae is. Dougherty's is one of 1.1 million mortgages, worth about $20.2 billion, bought by Fannie Mae last year from 1,500 lenders in the United States. "I thought the mortgage was owned by Meridian," said Dougherty.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will suspend, from Dec. 19 to Jan. 2, evictions involving foreclosed occupied single family and two- to four-unit properties that had their mortgages. The suspensions will apply only to eviction lockouts related to Freddie- and Fannie-owned properties. During this period, legal and administrative proceedings for evictions may continue, but families living in foreclosed properties will be permitted to remain in their home.    - Alan J. Heavens

Fannie Mae, the nation's largest source of mortgage financing, has announced a 10-year, $2 trillion commitment to provide housing to 18 million American families. At the same time, Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and CEO, pronounced the congressionally chartered corporation's seven-year, $1 trillion affordable-housing initiative a success. Raines said the goals established for the initiative in 1994 by his predecessor, James A. Johnson, had been reached eight months early.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are adopting new guidelines to streamline the process for short sales, which most real estate observers expect will outpace foreclosures in the coming year. The guidelines, required by the Federal Housing Finance Agency and effective June 15, would require servicers of mortgages backed by Freddie and Fannie to review and respond to requests for short sales within 30 calendar days of receipt of a buyer's offer. A short sale is a transaction in which a lender agrees to accept less than the amount owed on the mortgage.

A subsidiary of Resource America Inc., a Philadelphia real estate investment firm, said it paid $11.4 million for a half-occupied Houston apartment complex with 856 units. Fannie Mae had foreclosed on the property in August 2010, after the former owners defaulted on an $18.6 million loan. The estimated replacement cost of the apartment complex is $53 million, the buyer, Resource Real Estate Opportunity REIT Inc., said. - Harold Brubaker

At long last, HARP 2.0 is available to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers who want to refinance but owe more on their mortgages than their houses now are worth. HARP 2.0 - HARP stands for Home Affordable Refinance Program - is being billed as an improvement over the three-year-old version that just about everyone acknowledges didn't help anyone. The reason for that failure: The original program had limits on loan-to-value ratio, the amount of a mortgage as a percentage of the appraised value of a property.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must do a better job limiting legal expenses paid by the two mortgage giants to their former executives facing lawsuits, a new watchdog report says. A report issued Wednesday by the inspector general for the Federal Housing Finance Agency says Fannie and Freddie together have paid more than $109 million in legal expenses for former executives since 2004, with Fannie covering more than $99 million for just three top officials.

Next to filing for bankruptcy, nothing wrecks your chances of qualifying for a home loan like a foreclosure. And if you got out from under an oppressive mortgage through a short sale, in which the bank agreed to accept less than you owed, future lenders may look upon you just as unfavorably. This is the reality former owners of the more than four million homes lost to foreclosure in the six years since the housing bubble burst will have to confront. That's because the mortgage-lending guidelines most banks follow prohibit them from making loans to people with foreclosure or a short sale in their credit history, often for years.

Politicians, economists, and pundits continue to argue about why U.S. housing prices boomed and busted over the last decade. Some blame federal housing programs, others exotic mortgage-backed derivatives. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are faulted for attempting to make homeowners out of low-income families. Mortgage brokers, real estate agents, and appraisers are said to have pumped up home prices to line their pockets. The Federal Reserve is accused of keeping interest rates too low for too long.

President Obama detailed plans Wednesday to help an estimated 3.5 million homeowners refinance into lower-rate mortgages through the Federal Housing Administration and to turn hundreds of thousands of houses repossessed by lenders into rentals. The President spoke at a news conference in Falls Church, Va., where, he said, home values have declined 25 percent since the housing bubble burst five years ago. Obama, who announced the initiative in his State of the Union address Jan. 24, said the program was designed for "responsible" homeowners who are current in their mortgage payments but are unable to refinance loans at fixed rates as low as 3.8 percent because they owe more than their houses are now worth.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney battled for primacy Thursday in the final debate before next week's high-stakes Florida Republican presidential primary amid a race that has grown nastier in recent days and exposed the fault lines of class and ideology in the party. The two wrestled over their respective involvement in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, quasi-government mortgage companies that some hold partly responsible for the real estate crash, and their stances on immigration.

Who owns my mortgage? That's a question I have been asked almost two dozen times in the four weeks since Christmas, and the reason is always the same: A change is needed. Someone is trying to refinance the mortgage or trying to save a house from foreclosure, among possible scenarios. Finding the answer to this question has become extremely important to many homeowners, but especially to those in financial trouble. The many programs designed to stem the record tide of foreclosures have different requirements, depending on where your mortgage ended up after you signed that huge stack of papers at settlement.

WASHINGTON - The nation's five largest mortgage lenders have agreed to overhaul their industry after deceptive foreclosure practices drove homeowners out of their homes, government officials said Monday. A draft settlement between the banks and U.S. states has been sent to state officials for review. Those who lost their homes to foreclosure are unlikely to get their homes back or benefit much financially from the settlement, which could be as high as $25 billion. About 750,000 Americans - about half of the households who might be eligible for assistance under the deal - will likely receive checks for about $1,800.