Fannie Mae

IT WAS WAY BACK IN 2004 when mortgage giant Fannie Mae came under fire for using risky investments and accounting tricks to meet its earnings-per-share targets. On Tuesday, the company finally announced that it would pay $400 million in fines and accept stiff restrictions on its operations in a long-awaited settlement with the federal government.

There's a too-little, too-late feel to Fannie Mae's efforts to move on from the ominous headlines about its shoddy accounting practices. Even as the mortgage giant was announcing its agreement with its once-obsequious regulators to add billions of dollars to its cash reserves, the Justice Department, Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission were speeding their own inquiries into Fannie's practices.

Fixed 30-year mortgage rates in the 5% range? Minimum down payments below 5%? Jumbo-sized home loans for high-cost markets at regular interest rates? Kiss them goodbye ? possibly sooner than you might guess. Take a snapshot of today's mortgage market conditions and frame it. It's highly likely you'll never see anything like these favorable combinations of rates and terms again. That's the inescapable conclusion emerging from the Obama administration's white paper on possible remedies for the two ailing giants of housing finance ?

WASHINGTON -- Bank of America Corp. said Monday it had agreed to pay more than $10 billion to Fannie Mae to settle claims related to troubled mortgages sold largely by Countrywide Financial Corp. during the subprime housing boom. BofA, which acquired Calabasas-based Countrywide in 2008, said it agreed to buy back $6.75 billion in residential mortgage loans sold to Fannie Mae and pay the housing finance giant an additional $3.6 billion in cash. The mortgages were sold to Fannie Mae from 2000 through 2008.

Here's mortgage giant Fannie Mae's sobering New Year's greeting for home buyers and refinancers in 2011: Give me more money! If you want a loan this year, you're going to have to pay more ? thousands of dollars more in some cases ? even if you've got stellar credit scores and bundles of cash handy for a down payment. Things could get much worse if your scores have been sagging with the economy and you don't have much money upfront. In a Dec. 23 memo to lenders in its network, Fannie announced that it had decided to impose a new schedule of higher add-on fees, similar to what Freddie Mac ?

Speculators poured into shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Monday, the first day of trading after the Obama administration in effect gave the companies blank checks of federal support. But exactly how the government's move makes a payoff for Fannie and Freddie shareholders more likely in the long run, rather than less likely, ought to puzzle most investors. The stock market's reaction mystifies veteran banking analyst Bert Ely at Ely & Co. in Alexandria, Va. "They're not going to get anything back," he says of any investors who have long-term faith in the mortgage giants' shares.

A congressional investigation has found that Countrywide Financial Corp. made 173 preferential mortgage loans to employees of housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which purchased many of the company's loans. The mortgages were made as part of Countrywide's VIP program, known informally as "Friends of Angelo" for former Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo R. Mozilo. The program offered discounted rates and other perks. Previous investigations found that VIP loans were given to some influential Washington players, including Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.

WASHINGTON - Fannie Mae on Wednesday reported a $2.7-billion profit for the first three months of the year and will not need new taxpayer money for the first time since the government seized the housing finance giant in 2008. Fannie Mae said the improvement in its finances came from a slower decline in housing prices, a lower rate of homeowners behind on their payments and fewer foreclosed homes on the company's books. The profit was its first since the fourth quarter of 2010, when Fannie Mae made about $73 million.

Fannie Mae, the mortgage giant that was bailed out by taxpayers, reported a quarterly loss of $13.1 billion and said there are doubts about its long-term viability as it asked the Treasury Department for more money. Fannie Mae said Monday that it lost $13.1 billion, or $2.29 a share, in the first quarter, compared with a loss of $23.2 billion, or $4.09, a year earlier. "Our first-quarter results were driven primarily by credit-related expenses, which remain at elevated levels due to weaknesses in the economy and the housing market," the government-controlled mortgage-finance firm said.

Here's some good news for people who have had to give the deed on their house back to the bank because of financial problems, or who have done a short sale to avoid foreclosure: You may not have to wait the typical four or five years to requalify for financing to buy another home. Instead, it could be as little as two years. In a bulletin to lenders April 14, mortgage giant Fannie Mae said it was relaxing its previous rules that prevented loan applicants who had participated in short sales or deeds in lieu of foreclosure from obtaining a new mortgage for extended periods of time.