A favorable government watchdog report could clear Fannie Mae to transfer up to $300 billion in mortgage servicing to specialty firms, according to FBR Capital Markets.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency Inspector General released a report this week detailing how Fannie negotiated a price with Bank of America (BAC) to transfer $73.6 billion in mortgages to a specialty servicer.
The report showed Fannie had targeted between $300 billion and $400 billion in mortgages causing the most losses.
These are the loans in need of transfer to specialty mortgage shops better equipped to deal with distressed homeowners.
“This should bode well for any servicer with high-touch, special servicing capabilities,” FBR said. “We expect that these evaluations have likely removed any hurdles to further sales as they validated the procedures used to transfer the loans, cleared up most of the concerns over pricing and reiterated the need to transfer troubled loans to high-touch servicers.”
