My Mind on Mortgages

The NYT did a great article about foreign participation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed bonds on July 21st. The article quantifies the involvement of foreign investors in buying mortgage-backed bonds (which helps keep bond yields/ interest rates low). The article suggests that in the past few years Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac officials [...]

Unless you live under a rock you are probably very familiar with the turmoil ongoing in the financial sector of our economy. This turmoil brought Indymac Bank to its knees last Friday when the Federal Government seized it’s assets for failing to maintain adequate capitalization. This bank failure is the 2nd largest bank failure in [...]

Fannie Mae released an announcement yesterday which indicated they are tightening some of their guidelines to qualify for a new mortgage. The reason this is important is because Fannie Mae dictates underwriting guidelines for virtually all mortgage lenders. There is one guideline change within this announcement that we feel will be impactful and thought we [...]

I got this email from an industry insider today. Although the email string doesn’t indicate who wrote the email apparently it is from a Fannie Mae official who tracks the investment communities’ demand for mortgage-backed bonds. Why is this important? This email explains in detail who the typical buyers are for mortgage-backed bonds and why [...]