by Calculated Risk on 12/28/2009 12:52:00 PM

From Bloomberg: Fannie, Freddie Changes Clear Way for ‘Large-Scale’ Buyouts

The U.S. government’s expanded capital backstops and portfolio limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac increase “the prospect of large-scale” purchases by the companies of delinquent mortgages out of the securities they guarantee, according to Credit Suisse Group analysts.
...
“This announcement increases the prospect of large-scale voluntary buyouts by removing the portfolio cap hurdle and helping funding by potentially increasing debt-investor confidence,” Mahesh Swaminathan and Qumber Hassan, the Credit Suisse debt analysts in New York, wrote in a report yesterday.

Tanta discussed this possibility a couple of years ago:

Fannie Mae has always had the option to repurchase seriously delinquent loans out of its MBS at par (100% of the unpaid principal balance) plus accrued interest to the payoff date. This returns principal to the investors, so they are made whole. If Fannie Mae can work with the servicer to cure these loans, they become performing loans in Fannie Mae’s portfolio. If they cannot be cured, they are foreclosed, and Fannie Mae shows the charge-off and foreclosure expense on its portfolio’s books (these are no longer on the MBS’s books, since the loan was bought out of the MBS pool).

Now, Fannie also sometimes has the obligation to buy loans out of an MBS pool. But we are—Fannie Mae made this clear both in the footnote to Table 26 of the Q and in the conference call—talking about optional repurchases. Why would Fannie Mae buy nonperforming loans it doesn’t have to buy? Because it has agreed to workout efforts on these loans, including but not necessarily limited to pursuing a modification. Under Fannie Mae MBS rules, worked out loans have to be removed from the pools (and the MBS has to receive par for them, even if their market value is much less than that).
emphasis added

I suspect the uncapping the losses of Fannie and Freddie is related to modifications (update: others don't think this has anything to do with mods)