Finance

The Chicago city ordinance establishing mortgage lender liability for vacant buildings that are caught in the foreclosure process will be credit negative for RMBS deals, Moody's Investors Service said.

National lender and servicer Carrington Mortgage Services (CMS) has expanded its mortgage origination unit by purchasing certain assets of American Home Equity Corp. (AHE). Mortgage lender AHE is based in Irvine, CA based.

The mortgage operations at Ally Financial lost $127 million for the second quarter due to its legacy portfolio, down from profits of $34 million in the first quarter and $230 million for the second quarter 2010.

David Stevens arrived as a commissioner at the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in 2009 vowing to restore financial discipline to a government housing body facing the stresses of a post-crash world.

The CMBS market continues to feel the ripple effect of last week's announcement from Standard & Poor's that it would stop rating new conduit/fusion CMBS deals, with yet another transaction pulled from the market because of the rating agency's move.

The proposed Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) rules have a better chance at harming the housing market than they have at addressing underlying weaknesses in the securitization process. They are an overreaction to the excessive risk-taking during the housing boom.

A Brazilian regulation that goes into effect today ratchets up the default probability of mezzanine tranches in domestic ABS, said Moody’s Investors Service in a release.

BNP Paribas hired Christian Wulf as director in charge of Latin America for the firm's aviation finance group.

By Richard DeKaser's calculations, it takes just 16.5% of the average consumer's income to make payments on a 30-year mortgage for an average priced home. The last time the ratio was this low was 1968.

The Loan Syndications and Trading Association (LSTA) today submitted to joint regulators a 20-page comment letter explaining why managers of Open Market CLOs are not subject to the risk retention provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The debt ceiling compromise will bring some temporary relief to the securitization market, although the benefits will likely be short-lived.

In July, more than $1.3 billion in CMBS conduit loans were resolved with losses, Trepp said today in a report.

The 'on-again/off-again' sale process has started once again for Aurora Loan Services (ALS), the Colorado-based mortgage banking division of Aurora Bank FSB, according to industry officials.

Homeowners who originated their mortgages during the peak of the housing boom with unfavorable loan terms are getting more frustrated with their inability to refinance with mortgage servicers, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2011 U.S. primary mortgage servicer satisfaction study.

New Hampshire Higher Education Loan Corp. is in the market with a taxable SLABS deal Series 2011-1 worth $522.635 million. The joint lead managers on the 144A transaction are RBC Capital Markets and UBS.

Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) is currently seeking public comment on five publications that were released today regarding its RMBS rating process. This means that the rating agency can now rate residential mortgage-backed deals.

When Democrats used their majorities in the House and Senate last year to pass a financial overhaul largely along partisan lines, top Republicans were clear about what should happen next.

At the recent American Securitization Forum (ASF) Sunset Seminar, panelists looked back at the first year of Dodd-Frank, saying regulators are still missing the bigger picture.

Europe's reenactment of last summer's sovereign debt crisis heated up as talks of a Greek debt default intensified once again this July.

Greek bailout talks intensified once again this July, a repeat in many ways of last summer's discussions. But structured finance issuance is taking it much harder this year, as Nora Colomer examines in the cover story. In July two actively marketed European securitizations were abruptly pulled when the market got too volatile. Other issuers went the retained route rather than face the risks associated with bringing new-issue deals to market.