On April 24,2014, Fannie Mae hosted its semi-annual Legal Issues Forum (“LIF”) where the state of the multifamily finance market and recent developments in its multifamily program were the primary topics of discussion. This year, Anne McCulloch, Senior Vice President, Multifamily Legal and Hillary Provinse, Vice President, Multifamily Customer Engagement, gave the opening remarks. McCulloch shared her perspective on Fannie Mae’s multifamily business and provided an overview of the legislative landscape that the government sponsored entities will navigate going forward. Provinse, on the other hand, shared her insights on trends in the multifamily market and provided projections for the 2014 multifamily production volume.
Unlike past LIFs, most of the panels included a combination of members of the Multifamily Mortgage Business (“MMB”), in-house counsel and/or lender’s counsel as participants, which included Ballard Spahr’s Andrew Rogers and Anna Mahaney. This was a favorable change because it created a larger platform for discourse by having both Fannie Mae in-house counsel and MMB members available to answer questions and discuss issues throughout the LIF.
With an ambitious agenda on the table, the spring LIF covered a broad range of topics, including:
- MBS Update
- Multifamily Affordable Housing Update
- Master Lease Loan Documents; Historic Tax Credit Transactions
- Transfers for Tiers 3 and 4
- Loss Mitigation Update
- Lender Update
- Guide Update
- Annotated Loan Agreement Status Update
- Preferred Equity/Mezzanine Debt.
Despite the hefty agenda, it was an afternoon well spent and, I suspect, Fannie Mae insiders would likely agree. Based on the updates provided at the LIF, we anticipate future blog entries when the various Guide updates and new modifications to the multifamily loan documents are published.