RMBS

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.

Foreclosure doesn't usually mean coming down in the world, economists at the Federal Reserve have found.

Originations of Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-backed loans fell 23% during the first three quarters of fiscal 2011 compared to the same period a year earlier, a further sign of a weakening single-family market.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has issued an Investor Alert warning investors not to choose risky yet high-reward asset classes over more traditional investments.

Standard & Poor’s found that default rates on U.S. residential mortgage loans continued to fall in June, but the firm is cautious about the remaining threat posed by shadow inventory.

In January all the mortgage industry was aflutter with talk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac —under the tutelage of their regulator — were weighing a change to minimum servicing fees.