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Research
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FHFA Brief 14-1: Employment, Income, and House Prices
Author: Andrew Leventis, Principal Economist The Brief assesses recent data on home price movements and labor market conditions. Measured over the most recent four quarters, statewide home price appreciation is shown to be only weakly related to growth in employment and personal income. Statistics...
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Housing and Mortgage Markets in 2012
The paper was prepared by staff of the Office of Policy Analysis and Research—William Doerner, Ken Lam, Andrew Leventis, Saty Patrabansh, Valerie Smith, and Jesse Weiher—under the supervision of Robert S. Seiler, Jr. Peter Alex, Colin Shelby, and Colleen Yeskovich provided research assistance. This...
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Mortgage Market Note 13-01: A Study of First-Time Homebuyers
Author: Saty Patrabansh Abstract: This study estimated annual first-time homebuyer shares using 20 years of loan-level mortgage data from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA. These shares are consistent with popular estimates from various survey data. The first-time homebuyer shares in the U.S. during...
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Housing and Mortgage Markets in 2011
The paper was prepared by Andrew Leventis, Valerie Smith, Jesse Weiher, and Ken Lam of the Office of Policy Development and Research under the supervision of Robert S. Seiler, Jr. Peter Alex, Hanna Nguyen, Colleen Yeskovich, and Alison Wardle provided research assistance. This Federal Housing...
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Building a New Infrastructure for the Secondary Mortgage Market
The purpose of this white paper is to describe a proposed framework for both a new securitization platform and a model Pooling and Servicing Agreement as set forth in the February 2012 Strategic Plan for Enterprise Conservatorships (Strategic Plan) published by the Federal Housing Finance Agency...
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FHFA Technical Analysis of Principal Forgiveness
In January 2012, FHFA released the analyses the agency had conducted since December 2010 on the feasibility and benefit of principal forgiveness as a loan modification tool. [1] This paper presents the agency’s most recent work, which considers subsidy payments [2] the Department of the Treasury...
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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Single-Family Guarantee Fees in 2010 and 2011
Author: Robin Seiler, Manager of Policy Research Section 1601 of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) requires the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to conduct an ongoing study of the guarantee fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to submit annual reports to Congress...
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Mortgage Market Note 12-02: 20 Year vs. 30 Year Refinance Option
Under the changes to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) [1] announced late last year, borrowers with loan-to-value (LTV) ratios greater than 125% will now have the opportunity to refinance. In addition, these changes provided pricing incentives for borrowers to choose a shorter term...
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Mortgage Market Note 12-01: A Primer on Price Discount of REO Properties
Author: Saty Patrabansh Abstract: REO properties sell at a discount from normal houses. Various estimates of REO discount exist in the news and the housing finance literature. This mortgage market note shows that the variation in the estimates of REO discount can be largely explained by how the...
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Market Estimation Model for the 2012 - 2014 Enterprise Single-Family Housing Goals: Final Rule
Author: Jay Schultz In establishing benchmarks for the 2012 and 2014 single-family mortgage housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is required to measure the size of the mortgage market. This paper documents the methodology used to...