RMBS

Citigroup expects to increase its loss mitigation staff by 500 new hires and take a one-time $50 million charge to comply with a federal consent order it signed to settle servicing and foreclosure shortcomings.

Citigroup has sold $10 billion of residential mortgages over the past five quarters as it continues to shrink its “bad bank,” which is known as Citi Holdings.

Single-family housing starts unexpectedly jumped 7.7% in March and the government revised upward its estimates of building activity in February and January by 23,000 units.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is reportedly publishing a letter later this month outlining plans for a data warehouse of underlying loans that back ABS deals.

Standard & Poor's stated that the U.S. Treasury's support of the two GSEs impacted its choice to revise the outlook on the U.S. long-term sovereign credit rating to negative from stable.

Legacy private-label RMBS market participants should take note: junior bondholders in certain vintages of low-rated nonagency RMBS have, in some cases, ended up with a payoff due to slow liquidation timelines, and a “rare” servicing transfer risk has surfaced, according to two recent rating agency reports.

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to be prohibited from purchasing mortgages tied to properties with private transfer fees (PTFs), then the GSEs should create a database of these "hidden fees" fees to better protect lenders and consumers, according to the Consumer Mortgage Coalition (CMC).

To many in the industry, federal regulators just gave Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) a big stamp of approval.

The new standard mortgage disclosure formfor borrowers will be tested starting next month, according to a report in the Wall St. Journal.

Fitch Ratings said that the securitization industry supports its plan to implement a more forward-looking, and countercyclical RMBS modeling framework. The model is based on projected home price movements where credit enhancement rises as risk enters the system and dips when the risk is neutralizing.