Page 25 - The GSE Report March-April 2018

FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC
MJARN.U-ARPYR.20210818
“time out” in conservatorship, the American Dream has slipped away from many Americans. From 2007 to 2017, the homeownership rate has fallen from 67.8% to 64.2%, respectively, as an additional 3.8 million households became renters of single-family homes, (20% of single-family housing stock). During this post-crisis era, the America Dream has languished.
Concurrently, mortgage lending is being disrupted by technology—including broad adoption of mortgage origination apps (such as Quicken Loan’s Rocket Mortgage, Bank of America’s Digital Mortgage Experience and Wells Fargo’s yourLoanTracker SM), digitization of mortgage servicing, and the implementation of blockchain technology for mortgage processing and deed recording, etc. Ultimately, technology may become the primary driver of reforming the housing finance system rather than public policy.
The buzz on FHFA’s next director
Inside Mortgage Finance’s Paul Muolo wrote:
Mel Watt has roughly eight more months in office, but already industry lobbyists and GSE watchers are playing “guess who the next FHFA director might be.” A few obvious names have been kicked around, such as Mark Calabria, chief economist for Vice President Mike Pence. A few sources thought former Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Ed DeMarco might be an interesting pick...
One trade group official had this to say about a DeMarco pick: “He’d be a great candidate as the conservatives love him...”
In April 2017, the Financial Services Roundtable hired DeMarco as president of its housing policy council. At the time, he’d been serving as a senior fellow in residence at the Milken Institute’s Center for Financial Markets... (Inside Mortgage Finance, Paul Muolo, 04/27/18)
FHFA Director Watt’s “amazing journey”
In a speech at the National Association of Minority Mortgage Bankers of America, FHFA Director Mel Watt said:
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