Finance

Realpoint has launched an operational risk assessment practice that will be headed by Michael Gutierrez, formerly managing director and head of servicer evaluations at Standard & Poor's.

VW Credit (VCI) is in the market with an auto securitization called Volkswagen Auto Loan Enhanced Trust 2011-1 (VALET 2011-1 or 2011-1). The six-tranche offering, managed by JPMorgan Securities, is worth $1 billion.

A question posed by Sen. David Vitter last week has sparked fears among investors about what exactly two top administration officials meant when they responded to whether the GSEs would be exempted from pending risk-retention requirements.

Mortgage bankers originated $16.8 billion of Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-backed loans in February, a 27% decline from the prior month, and a sign that the spring home buying season may not be off to a rosy start.

The speed and volume of loans in U.S. CMBS being transferred into special servicing has begun to subside in recent months, according to Fitch Ratings.

Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO) raised more than its targeted $1.5 billion to buy assets from banks looking to strengthen their balance sheets, according to a Bloomberg report.

When it comes to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac’s future and the administration’s options for this, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) last week was pushing for a guaranty that could be priced in a manner similar to what is seen in the derivatives market.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) to reduce credit risk to otherwise vulnerable securitizations, such as auto loan deals.

The dollar amount of second lien mortgage debt continued to fall in the fourth quarter with roughly $620 billion in loans outstanding nationwide, a 9% decline over the past 12 months, according to survey figures compiled by ASR sister publication National Mortgage News.

The nation's 'robo-signing' scandal has left the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) with a backlog of nearly 176,000 loans that were in the process of being foreclosed upon at the end of 2010.

Volkswagen is in the market with a €7.5 million German auto ABS deal that will be publicly placed.

The aggregate value of commercial real estate (CRE) loans priced by DebtX that back CMBS rose to 79.9% as of Feb. 28 from 79.8% as of Jan. 31.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury will begin an orderly wind down of its remaining portfolio of $142 billion in agency-guaranteed MBS. Beginning this month, it plans to sell up to $10 billion in agency-guaranteed MBS per month, although this would be subject to market conditions.

Lender Processing Services (LPS) reported its February 2011 month-end mortgage performance statistics from its loan-level database of nearly 40 million mortgage loans.

REO services provider Default Resource hired James Zeldin as executive vice president and chief sales officer.

After helping banks weather the financial crisis and oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Richard Neiman is expected to step down as New York banking superintendent in April.

As the mortgage servicing settlement talks stall, some observers are wondering whether the two main parties — the banks and the attorneys general — would be better off without making a deal.

Ally Financial, which hopes to go public this year, has agreed to sell $1.25 billion of bonds related to excess mortgage servicing rights.

JPMorgan Chase chairman Jamie Dimon recently sat down with analysts at Citigroup Global Markets and told them what many smaller players in the mortgage business have believed all along: that a 20% downpayment definition on the 'qualified residential mortgage' (QRM) test will benefit the nation's megabanks.

Mortgage lenders funded roughly $33.2 billion of Jumbo mortgages during the fourth quarter, a handsome 57% gain from the same period a year earlier, according to survey figures compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.