Quote from Free Thinker:
they relaxed standards because they were losing market share to the wall street bundlers but they never took no doc liar loans of the type that caused so many forclosures.
f&f loans always had to be conforming loans.
wall street invented ways to bypass f&f.
Conforming loan From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search In the United States, a conforming loan is a mortgage loan that conforms to GSE guidelines.[1]
In general, any loan which does not meet guidelines is a non-conforming loan. A loan which does not meet guidelines specifically because the loan amount exceeds the guideline limits is known as a jumbo loan.[1]
CriteriaThe Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) set the criteria on what constitutes a conforming loan limit that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy. Criteria include debt-to-income ratio limits and documentation requirements. The maximum loan amount is set based on the October-to-October changes in median home price, above which a mortgage is considered a jumbo loan, and typically has higher rates associated with it. This is because both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac only buy loans that are conforming, to repackage into the secondary market, making the demand for a non-conforming loan much less. By virtue of the laws of supply and demand, then, it is harder for lenders to sell the loans, thus it would cost more to the consumers (typically 1/4 to 1/2 of a percent.)