Bloomberg report: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s new overseer said the mortgage giants can be freed from government control even if Congress doesn’t pass a housing-finance overhaul, while signaling that lawmakers will get 'more than sufficient time' to come up with a plan of their own."

One of the nation’s two biggest mortgage financiers reports a “robust 5% total guarantee book growth, year over year — Single-Family grew 4% and Multifamily grew 14%.”

Mel Watt’s time as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is officially over. Watt became the first Senate-confirmed director of the FHFA back in 2014, and led the FHFA for five years, but his term as FHFA director ended on Jan. 6, 2019. Here's a look back at Watt's time at the FHFA and a look ahead at what's next.

According to Robert Schmidt, reporting for Bloomberg, vocal GSE critic Josh Rosner, who successfully runs a financial services business, is claiming financial disability is responsible for him not filing taxes accordingly. And now, Rosner wants his refund but the IRS is saying, "not so fast, loudmouth."

Despite other prominent housing figures stating earlier that morning that the GSE conservatorship is unstable and undesirable, Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos complimented the government on its decision to bail out the companies and place them in conservatorship for 10 years. "Conservatorship has been very successful," Mayopoulos said. "What the government did worked quite well."

It’s now officially been 10 years since the government took Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship. And in that decade, an uneasy status quo has developed with Fannie and Freddie dominating the housing finance system, despite their limited capital bases and unresolved position as wards of the federal government. But if House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling has anything to say about it in his final days in office, all of that uncertainty will soon be resolved.

With the 10-year anniversary of the government taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship nigh upon us, a coalition of the housing industry’s largest trade groups, affordable housing advocates, and others is calling on the Trump administration and Congress to enact permanent reforms to the government-sponsored enterprises.

[Expert commentary] Nearly 10 years after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed into conservatorship, housing finance reform remains the single largest piece of unfinished business of the housing crisis. The failure of Fannie and Freddie, the taxpayer bailout and repayment that followed, and their unresolved conservatorship continue to demand final resolution, even if Congress does not.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump released a massive proposal that, among other things, would end the government conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but now it looks as though that won’t be happening anytime soon.

The proposed end of conservatorship for the GSEs by the Trump administration might be the biggest news of the year for the mortgage industry, find out what the MBA has to say about it. Plus, a new ProPublica report shows that HUD left hundreds of thousands at risk of lead poisoning and the LA Clippers are in hot water with residents of the city of Inglewood.