freddie mac

It’s hard to imagine now, but it wasn’t all that long ago when it could be hard to find average folks who knew or cared that much about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the oddly-named, government-sponsored entitites that own or guarantee about half the nation’s mortgages. The obscure workings of the secondary market weren’t exactly [...]

Startling requirements in out-dated, but still used paperwork raises questions about how well Treasury is overseeing the centerpiece of Obama’s foreclosure crisis solution.

Foreclosures jumped again in April, setting another record and providing more evidence that the housing crisis shows little sign of slowing down. RealtyTrac, which collects foreclosure data, reported a record 342,000 homes received notices of default, auction sales, or bank repossessions in April. That’s a 32 percent increase over April 2008’s foreclosures. And it means [...]

A longtime analyst for mortgage giant Freddie Mac who served as acting Chief Financial Officer since the firm was taken over by the federal government ast September was found dead in his suburban Virginia home, after an apparent suicide, The Washington Post reports. David Kellermann became CFO after the government ousted top executives of Freddie [...]

This should come as no surprise, though it’s certainly a sign that more hard times are ahead: Banks are moving forward with foreclosures now that voluntary freezes by lenders are over, The Wall Street Journal reports today.
As TWI reported recently, a ban on foreclosures by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended for good [...]

Mortgage giants made no public effort to inform housing attorneys of changes to anti-foreclosure and eviction program.

Well, look at this: While we were riveted, watching that AIG public lashing on Wednesday, top executives other spectacularly failed companies –  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to be precise — are taking home some big bonuses as well, The Wall Street Journal reports.
From The Journal:
Fannie Mae is due to pay retention bonuses of between [...]

Last month, TWI’s Mary Kane reported that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were quietly slipping requirements into loan modification agreements that high-risk borrowers who are behind on their mortgage payments sign away their rights to sue, as a condition for changing the terms of their loans.
Talking Points Memo’s Elana Schor picked up on [...]

Home owners not expected to sign away their legal rights under a new loan modification program.

As our story pointed out Thursday, investors are worried about a lot of banks lately — including the Federal Home Loan Banks, the 12 regional institutions that are a crucial source of low-cost mortgage money to many other banks.
For years, the obscure banks had a reputation for poor risk controls and sloppy accounting, as regulators [...]