RMBS

Elizabeth Warren will step down Aug. 1 from her post as special advisor to the Treasury secretary at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Raj Date, a high-ranking official at the new bureau, will replace her.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could continue to operate even if the U.S. debt ceiling is not raised by Aug. 2. But raising the ceiling alone, without a budget deal, would leave them — and a mortgage market that relies on their guarantees — vulnerable.Despite improvements in their financial results, the government-sponsored enterprises need continued capital injections from the Treasury Department to avoid being unwound by their conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), according to the rating agency Fitch Ratings. On average, the GSEs have been drawing $2 billion to $3 billion a quarter since 2010, said analysts at Barclays Capital.

Mortgage application eased back 5% in the week ending July 22 with both refinancing and purchase activity slipping.

Concerns raised by the debt ceiling debate present minimal potential short-term risks for REITs that invest in agency MBS, and the sector should be viable under all “reasonable” scenarios, according to a new report from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW).

The White House nominee to be new Comptroller of the Currency said federal banking agencies need to work toward reassuring the public that robo-signings have stopped and foreclosure problems are being corrected.

New home sales fell 1% in June as demand for newly constructed units remained stuck in a low range during the traditional spring buying season.

Home prices rose 1% in May compared to April, and 16 of 20 metropolitan areas tracked by the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller house price index (HPI) registered monthly price gains.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley told the state's Register of Deeds Association that she will not sign a multistate settlement with large mortgage servicers that includes a widespread release of liability for claims against the Mortgage Electronic Registry Systems (MERS).Responding to a letter from Massachusetts’s 13 county and eight state-run regional registries, Coakley said her office continues to investigate whether servicers and investors conducted unlawful foreclosures with their reliance on MERS, the system used to track promissory note ownership of the majority of U.S. residential mortgages.

Manhattan Capital Markets (MCM) has hired Bill Berliner as an executive vice president and head of its advisory services unit. Berliner is the Principal of Berliner Consulting & Research.

CDR rates were relatively flat in July, with only one index posting a decrease of 1.2 points, while loss severities rose by an average of 1.5 points across all indices, according to a recent report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.