RMBS

Nearly 40 senators have now signed onto a measure urging federal regulators to modify a risk retention proposal and adopt changes that would pave the way for a broad exemption for securitized mortgages that have a low risk of default.

Despite lower mortgage rates in the week ending May 27, mortgage application activity slipped 4% with both refinancing and purchase activity lower.

Figures released by Lender Processing Services (LPS) in its April Mortgage Monitor reported the largest monthly increase in delinquencies in recent years at 2.4%. This rise is considerable even though April usually has the biggest rise in new delinquencies.

The Canadian mortgage originator First National Financial Corp. (FNFC) released financial results for 1Q11 and said it increased its mortgage originations by 26% to $2.4 billion from 2010 first quarter results.

The government is a month into selling its AIG holdings. Despite the bids for the auctions being pre-announced, the sales are causing a commotion in the RMBS secondary market, and the reaction from securitization players is not entirely positive.

The latest impediment to non-agency securitization stemming from the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA) is the proposal to create "premium capture cash reserve accounts" (PCCRAs). This provision, contained in the recent interagency document that proposed how the "risk retention" provisions of the DFA would be defined and implemented, would require the creation of a cash account to prevent structurers from attempting to monetize what they define as "excess spread." In my view, this proposal could be highly damaging to consumer mortgage lending and is premised on a flawed understanding of securitization practices. It also represents another in a series of impediments to the revival of the market for non-agency securitizations.

It has been a month since the Federal Reserve Bank of New York began selling off its Maiden Lane II (ML II) BWIC list.

Fitch Ratings is finalizing its new model framework for determining loan losses on pools of U.S. prime residential mortgage loans, which includes several important updates. Chief among them is the application of a proprietary sustainable home price model (SHP Model) that measures a property's current price against its sustainable value. The SHP model allows Fitch to take a forward looking, countercyclical view on the potential for negative equity, which has shown to strongly influence borrower default behavior.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) proposal issued May 18 to implement rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act tasks rating agencies with measures most have sought to address, but the proposal's detailed requirements could instead overwhelm smaller agencies.

Mortgages are heading into the summer months in good shape technically. Prepayments are also expected to remain benign unless mortgage rates drop substantially lower.