It's awesome....it's long overdue, and it's time. Fannie Mae, finally, last week, announce that it has taken steps to put things in place to allow it's current customers to refinance even though the equity may not be there anymore.
What does this mean?
If you had put 20% down to buy your home, but today's value shows that the equity is less than the 20% you can still refinance without having to worry about your home appraising out. For example, if you bought a 300,000 dollar home and borrowered 240,000 when you purchased your home, you had no PMI or Private Mortgage Insurance. Today that same home appraises for $260,000. A loss of $40,000 in value. In days past, you needed to either pay your loan down to the 80% mark, hope for some aggressive appraiser to risk his or her license to get you the $300,000 value, or pay that dreaded PMI that you didn't have when you bought the loan.
Now you can refinance, even with that new value, and not have to pay PMI. This will open a lot of doors for people who've been needing to refinance, but have been paralyzed because of the situations that have been developing with their property values.
Basically, all you need to do is apply and let the lender who partakes in this program run you through the 
Fannie Mae underwriting engine (which is known as DU). Fannie Mae will recognize the property that they lent on and made a determination that it was/is their loan and how they'll verify that the value was at the original amount. They may ask for a field review (that's mortgage speak for having an appraiser verify that the value was there in order to allow the loan to proceed) and that's it......Wallllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! Presto! You are refinanced.
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