NAREIT Alert (May 22, 2017)

To Members of NAREIT’s Mortgage REIT (MREIT) Council:

Last week, the Executive Committee of NAREIT’s MREIT Council participated in two Washington, DC meetings to introduce the Council’s agenda to the new Administration and the 115th Congress. The goal of these meetings--with Representative Sean P. Duffy (R-WI), the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee’s new Subcommittee on Insurance and Housing, and Mr. Craig Phillips, Counselor to the Secretary, U.S. Department of Treasury--was to increase awareness of the MREIT value proposition as a stable, permanent source of residential finance capital. We also raised the regulatory issues that currently constrain the residential MREIT sector, including the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) recent termination of MREIT captive Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) membership and the current SEC and IRS perspectives on the REIT income and asset tests that limit MREIT participation in GSE Credit Risk Transfer Securities (CRTs). We believe that these meeting represented a constructive step towards meaningful engagement on these topics with the new Administration and Congress.

Many of you probably saw the recent announcements from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regarding proposed “enhancements” to their benchmark CRT offerings aimed at REIT investors. Last week, the MREIT Council Executive Committee also had the opportunity to meet with representatives of Fannie Mae to learn about Fannie Mae’s proposed enhancements to its benchmark Connecticut Avenue Securities™ (CAS) Program.

Freddie Mac has now offered to brief the MREIT Council on the proposed changes to its own Structured Agency Credit Risk (STACR®) securities. 

Accordingly, we invite you to join NAREIT’s MREIT Council and executives from Freddie Mac’s Single Family CRT team on Thursday, June 1 at 2:00 pm EDT. Dial-in information is below. Please indicate here if you plan to attend this call.

NAREIT MREIT Council Conference Call with Freddie Mac CRT Team
Thursday June 1, 2017 at 2:00 pm EDT
Dial-in: (888) 453-4221 Access Code: 461476#

As always, please do not hesitate to get in touch with NAREIT President & CEO, Steve Wechsler; EVP & GC, Tony Edwards or SVP, Policy & Regulatory Affairs, Victoria Rostow, with any questions you might have about these or related issues.