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Working Paper 13-3: Impacts of Down Payment Underwriting Standards on Loan Performance - Evidence from the GSEs and FHA Portfolios
Policy discussions are increasingly focused on a return to more conservative mortgage underwriting standards. This study explores the relationship between down payment (loan‐to‐value ratio or LTV) requirements and loan performance of GSE and FHA mortgages, controlling for borrower characteristics...
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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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Working Paper 13-2: Generating Historically-Based Stress Scenarios Using Parsimonious Factorization
This paper describes an empirical approach to generate plausible, historically‐based interest rate shocks, which can be applied to any market environment and can readily link to movements in other key risk factors. The approach is based upon yield curve parameterization and requires a parsimonious...
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Working Paper 13-1: Distressed Sales and the FHFA House Price Index
Trends in residential house values can be expressed by changes in House Price Indexes (HPIs). HPIs are based on observed prices and help guide real estate activities. Since the recent housing crash, distressed sales have increased in numbers and have led to concerns about their effects on market...
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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...