Finance

Congress did not intend to impose additional legal liability on lenders that originate properly underwritten loans, according to 106 members of the House of Representatives.

A regulator will allow bond insurer MBIA to make a payment on surplus notes issued in 2008, the company said.

In their Securitization Weekly Overview, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts highlighted the “unusual” co-existence of the risk-on and risk-off trades that has emerged this year.

After the Federal Reserve Bank of New York made its initial offering in late April of its Maiden Lane III (ML III) holdings, it sold about 58% ($28 billion) of the portfolio, Barclays Capital analysts said in their most recent Securitized Products Weekly.

The Prestwick Mortgage Group is offering, as exclusive broker, $58 million in private investor multifamily/commercial servicing from an undisclosed private mortgage company.

Citigroup executives remain very guarded about the outlook for the housing market and they have no immediate plans to reduce their reserves for possible mortgage losses.

The Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB) is expanding its supervisory reach to focus on the 30 largest credit reporting agencies and credit bureaus.

Auto ABS are revving up this week as a number of companies in the sector are planning to sell their securitizations including Ford Motor Co., Ally Financial, DriveTime, Honda Motor Co. and Harley Davidson Credit Corp.

The lowering of CMBS tenant credit that started in April has continued to worsen with the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of J.C. Penney, according to the rating agency’s structured finance credit review emailed this morning. S&P said that the weighted average tenant rating is now close to ‘BB-‘.

Among the many concerns San Bernardino County’s recent eminent domain proposal highlighted, one that stood out to me was the larger problem with second liens.

Wells Fargo & Co hired 2,000 full time employees in the second quarter to keep up with its growing pipeline of mortgage applications.

Merscorp Holdings will provide the state of Delaware's Department of Justice Consumer Protection Unit a semi-annual report detailing results of its internal audits, according to the terms of a settlement agreement that resolves the state attorney general's October 2011 lawsuit against the private loan registry.

The June prepayment reports were released late July 6 with speeds faster than expected on 3.5s and 4.0s as the underlying credit-eligible borrowers responded to the successive record lows in mortgage rates that began in early May. At the same time, they were slower than expected in the higher Home Affordable Refinance Progam or HARP-eligible coupons.

Two student loan ABS transactions are currently in the market with a deal from the Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corp., which is issuing its Series 2012-1 offering.

Impac Mortgage, Irvine, Calif., is entering the reverse mortgage lending business on a retail basis in the Southwest with plans to expand it later on, said company president Bill Ashmore.

A recent Fannie Mae multifamily DUS REMIC that had two additional types of tranches not normally included in past deals brought in a slightly higher percentage of new investors than usual.

The American Securitization Forum (ASF) wrote a letter to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors that stated that the proposed plan to use eminent domain to seize residential mortgages would be “poor public policy and unconstitutional.”

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) did a comparative analysis of the CMBS 3.0 super senior bonds and CLO 2.0 ‘AAA’ spreads to find where the similarities are in terms of relative value.

Two Harbors Investment Corp. plans to offer 35,000,000 shares of its common stock in an underwritten public offering to buy more RMBS. The sale is subject to market and other conditions.

Wells Fargo Bank on Thursday agreed to pay $175 million to settle allegations by the Department of Justice (DOJ) that it targeted black and Hispanic neighborhoods in cities such as Baltimore and Chicago and steered those borrowers into high-cost subprime loans.