The Institutional Risk Analyst

We expect the shares of the GSEs to lose ground this week given last week’s bizarre announcement by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte that the GSEs will not be released from conservatorship after all. After pumping the two stocks for months with the prospect of release from conservatorship, Pulte said Friday that the GSEs would stay under federal control for now, reinforcing their conservatorship status while exploring a limited public offering option.

The latest statements about a possible stock offering for the GSEs seem to be designed to boost the share price in the near-term and do not provide any more information than we had when such statements were made previously.  Given the management changes announced yesterday and the other requirements for a successful offering, we have a hard time believing that a GSE stock offering will occur this year.  Notice how the shares of Fannie Mae popped for a couple of days this week

The accumulation of delinquent loans in the mortgage complex since COVID has gotten to the point where residential loan defaults have no place to go but up. Higher delinquency levels will enable investors to pay less for mortgage loans in the secondary markets, adding to cash losses per loan that are already several points vs the loan balance.  It's not about "gain on sale" but rather cash received.

So why would a firm like CrossCountry or UWMC be a buyer of higher coupon MSRs?  The short answer is that they believe their ability to retain the borrower by recapturing a prepayment will offset the obvious negative of high prepayments that comes with a lower interest rate environment.  These firms, it seems, would rather try to recapture prepayments on higher rate MSRs than own lower coupons and benefit from the stable cash flow from the servicing.

Q: Do you suppose the folks inside the Trump White House, who spend much of the day watching Newsmax, understand that loan forbearance is about to end for tens of thousands of American households on October 1st?

Why is FHFA Director Bill Pulte being excluded from the process of preparing the GSEs for release from conservatorship? Short answer is that Bessent and the professional staff at Treasury don’t think that the very high profile Pulte (aka "Little Trump") should be involved. But this may be a serious error in judgment by Scott Bessent.

The prospect of Zohran Mamdani becoming Mayor of NYC and the rise of other socialist elements in the Democratic Party means that owners of New York real estate are facing effective expropriation of their property.  And the real losers are New York consumers.

The $30 billion target for cash raised in a GSE IPO is pathetic and only confirms our view that the Treasury should repurchase the GSE voting common and issue new preferred to raise hundreds of billions in proceeds. If we keep the US Treasury as the majority common shareholder and finance the capital structure with new senior preferred, the Trump Administration could raise $500 billion easily.

In an earlier issue of The IRA, we noted that one reason that the GSE shares may be suffering is that the Trump Administration is apparently wrestling with how to take Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of conservatorship.

Why is Secretary Bessent talking publicly about Powell or the Fed at all? How does this squawking enhance the credibility of the Trump Administration or the U.S. Treasury?

Truth is, it’s hard to see the leadership of either RITM or UWMC combining with another entity, but the cost pressures in the industry today are driving radical change. 

We expect to see continued consolidation in the world of residential mortgage finance in coming months. The sad fact is that many less competitive businesses in mortgage finance have been waiting for the FOMC to ride to the rescue with lower interest rates. If rate cuts do not materialize in 2025, however, then many of these businesses may not survive.