A homeowner defense association has accused New York's largest foreclosure law firm of inappropriate behavior and asked the state's top judge to stop any foreclosure cases the firm handles.

Domestic banks are the largest holders of securities issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and similar entities, according to data from the Federal Reserve. (About half of banks' securities portfolios are made up of mortgage bonds backed by the government.)

Lender Processing Services (LPS) hired Nancy Murphy as vice president of investor relations.

Home prices fell 1.1% in September from the prior month and the outlook for the coming winter months – when sales tend to slow – are anything but positive, according to a new report from CoreLogic.

U.S. alternative asset manager Black Diamond Capital Management has acquired GSC Group’s London team, a player in the European CLO market, the company said in a release.

Chris Corcino has moved over to GE Capital, where he is a senior vice president in the global syndications & emerging markets group. Prior to GE Capital, Corcino worked on Latin American ABS at Deutsche Bank. He also had a stint at Standard Bank that began when the South African bank was looking to beef up its LatAm effort in 2006. He left the following year, around the time Standard appeared to be pulling back from Latin America.

October prepayments were higher than expected across the coupon stack for 30-year agency MBS.

JPMorgan Chase is said to be planning the launch a $739 million deal backed by floating-rate CMBS.

KGS-Alpha Capital Markets has expanded has boosted its CMBS trading team with the addition of Jeff Lewis, Kyla Wichser and Andrew Noonan. It has also brought on board a new chief strategist, Kamal Abdullah.

Auto-backed securitizations continue to drive issuance volumes in the consumer ABS space. Several deals were announced on Monday to kick off the week's activity.

First Marblehead experienced a net loss increase of $23.0 million from the previous year's comparable quarter.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has the expertise to set servicing, underwriting, and mortgage securitization standards that could lead to the development of a private-label MBS market, according to the GSE regulator.