Timothy Mayopoulos

Fannie Mae will pay the Treasury Department $58.7 billion in dividends by the end of June, Forbes reported.

The mortgage finance firm recorded $8.1 billion in pre-tax income in the first quarter. Its payment to the feds is enabled by a $50.6 billion valuation allowance on deferred tax assets, the magazine said. Then, the total dividends reimbursing the Treasury for the 2008 bailout will hit $95 billion. Yesterday, Freddie Mac reported a quarterly net income of $4.6 billion and owes a $7 billion dividend to the Treasury. No valuation allowance was announced, Forbes said. [more]

Edward DeMarco and Rep. Melvin Watt

President Barack Obama is expected to tap a North Carolina congressman to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, CNBC reported.

Rep. Melvin Watt, a Democrat and senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, was integral to passing Dodd-Frank, the financial regulatory overhaul enacted in 2010. [more]

Debra Shultz and Rolan Shnayder

One of the two remaining Manhattan-based lenders that issue no-income-check mortgages — which cater to buyers of high-end real estate — canceled its loan program, leading insiders to speculate that such loans will be nearly impossible for New York City buyers to get.

While only a tiny percentage of homebuyers rely on these loans — namely, self-employed individuals with a large volume of assets or people with nontraditional income sources and complicated tax returns — they are disproportionately used in high-end real estate purchases, including condominium and co-op sales in Manhattan, sources said. [more]

Fannie Mae posted a $17.2 billion profit for 2012, which marks the government-sponsored mortgage backer’s first annual profit since 2006 and its largest-ever annual profit, the Wall Street Journal reported. The sum stands stand in stark contrast to the lender’s recorded 2011 loss of $16.9 billion. [more]

Edward DeMarco

The controversial regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is urging lawmakers to drastically scale back or even eliminate the mortgage market’s reliance on taxpayers, Bloomberg News reported.

Edward DeMarco is making his push to privatize Fannie and Freddie less than a week after a bipartisan group of Senators introduced a bill to keep the Obama administration from selling off shares in the government-backed lending giants without congressional approval. [more]

From Left: Bob Corker, Mark Warner, David Vitter and Elizabeth Warren

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is looking to keep their colleagues from using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to balance the federal budget, according to the Wall Street Journal. Sens. Bob Corker,  Mark Warner, David Vitter and Elizabeth Warren have introduced a bill called the “Jumpstart GSE Reform Act,” which would prevent Congress from using increases in fees charged by Fannie and Freddie to bankroll spending increases or tax cuts…. [more]

Edward DeMarco

The government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are abandoning their separate systems for securitizing home loans and are forming a joint company that could be up and running as soon as next year, NBC News reported.

The consolidation is intended to help reduce the government’s role in the mortgage market, according to its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and will regulate the new company as well…. [more]

Who says money’s cheap? According to Bloomberg News, the era of record low interest rates, which help nudge the housing market towards recovery and record home-lending profits, could be coming to an end. Last week, Fannie Mae-guaranteed 3 percent securities, used by lenders to price new loans, fell to their lowest level since September 12, the day before the Federal Reserve announced that it would buy $40 billion of mortgage debt each month…. [more]

Banks were faced with an unprecedented number of lawsuits in 2012, and 2013 may prove to be another litigation-heavy year for banks. According to the New York Times, Bank of America agreed today to pay more than $10 billion to Fannie Mae to settle a dispute over mortgages that tanked during the housing crash. [more]

From left: Debra Schultz and Rolan Shnayder

Fannie Mae has amended its guidelines on how mortgage lenders verify large deposits to borrowers’ bank deposits, which analysts tell The Real Deal will speed up the process in clearing loans. The new rule now requires borrowers to provide documentation for the source of bank deposits larger than 25 percent of their total monthly income. Previously, lenders required borrowers to source deposits of any amount.

The change, announced by Fannie Mae on Nov. 13, is one of the few positives changes since the housing crisis, said Rolan Shnayder, director of new development lending at H.O.M.E. Mortgage Bank. [more]