Finance

The ever-optimistic National Association of Realtors (NAR) believes the worst housing downturn since the Great Depression is almost over.

The European primary pipeline saw the addition of a new $500 million U.K. credit card deal via the Penarth Master Issuer Plc's medium-term note program.

Lawyers have opened a new front in mortgage securities litigation by suing BNY Mellon and U.S. Bank over an alleged failure to properly handle the storage and recordkeeping of mortgage documents.

House and Senate conferees will not restore the $729,750 maximum loan limit on GSE-backed mortgages in high cost areas, sources told ASR sister publication National Mortgage News this weekend — but they have agreed to bump up the limit on Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans in lower cost areas.

Santander Consumer Bank is in the market with a €573.0 million ($780 million) securitization backed by a portfolio of German auto loans.

The CREL CDO delinquencies rose to 12.5% in October from 12% the prior month, according to the latest Fitch Ratings index.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could hurt the housing recovery if it imposes tighter restrictions on real estate investment trusts that purchase and securitize mortgages, according to industry comments filed with the agency.

A new Senate bill proposing to wind down the GSEs by at least 10% a year also includes a provision that would replace the private MERS System with an identical platform run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) — along with new national standards for mortgage title transfers.

The New York banking department has reached an agreement with Morgan Stanley to implement new mortgage servicing standards after signing a similar deal with Goldman Sachs in September.

Fortress Investment Group appears to be the winning bidder on a $50 billon package of mortgage servicing rights being peddled by Bank of America, according to industry analysts watching the deal.

The Royal Bank of Scotland filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday to issue a CMBS under its Commercial Mortgage Passthrough Certificates trust.

The European Central Bank's (ECB) new €40 billion ($55 billion) covered bond purchase program (CBPP2) kicked off yesterday with a €1 billion dual tap issuance from Credit Mutuel Arkea's program.

MBIA presented a brighter picture of its future on Thursday.

With CLO issuance on the rise, it’s easy to forget that there are a number of regulatory threats to this important source of liquidity for corporate loans.

The Oklahoma Police Pension and Retirement System has sued U.S. Bancorp alleging that the bank failed to ensure that the securities sold to the fund were backed by loans properly transferred to trusts, according to a Bloomberg report.

Regulators have identified how borrowers may have been harmed by a multitude of foreclosure errors, but they are largely leaving it to the servicers and their consultants to figure out how to fix it.

Home prices, which have fallen nearly 6% over the past four quarters (ending June 30), could fall another 3.6% by 2Q11, according to analysts at Fiserv, which owns and generates the Case/Shiller house price indexes.

The RMBS and related CDO sectors lead the pack in both realized and expected future credit losses from U.S. structured finance issuances, according to Fitch Ratings.

Volkswagen is going to issue a $750 million auto lease transaction under its Volkswagen Auto Lease Trust 2011-A.