Greg Reiter has joined Wells Fargo Securities as managing director and head of Residential Mortgage Research, the bank announced today.

A conduit offering led by JP Morgan and a new single borrower transaction led by Goldman Sachs entered the pipeline late last week, which will bring year to date issuance total to $48bn, according to Standard & Poor’s.

An increase in new builds in the multifamily sector in recent months has raised some concerns that the market may face supply risk down the line; but CMBS industry analysts said it’s probably premature to suggest that the sector is headed towards a bubble.

The housing market finally appears to be on the mend, but the “shadow” inventory of housing that is unoccupied but has not yet been released into the market, either as a rental property or sale listing bears watching.

The Bank of England’s Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) has slowed U.K. RMBS issuance and is partly responsible for a slowdown in European securitization issuance in October, according to Standard & Poor’s.

November prepayments were not as bad as investors feared, given the collision of elevated refinancing activity on lower mortgage rates in response to QE3 and the rush by servicers to close loans before guarantee fees increased on Dec. 1.

Due diligence provider Allonhill LLC, Denver, Thursday afternoon laid off 140 staff workers and contractors as part of a company-wide restructuring.

Belgium’s KBC issued its inaugural covered bonds to strong investor appetite that saw orders for the bank’s €1.5 billion ($1.9bn) benchmark swell to €6bn.

The 2012 tally for CLO issuance is bound to surpass $47 billion this week, according to Standard & Poor’s.

The balance of specially serviced CMBS loans posted its eighth consecutive monthly decrease in November, but analysts at Deutsche Bank said in their 2013 CMBS outlook report that loans are not being modified or liquidated like they used to be.

Societe Generale said it hired Warren Geiger as a managing director and senior CMBS trader in New York.

RBC Capital Markets hired Ming Tang to its new collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) trading team, a spokesperson with the bank confirmed this week.